In October 2016, Britain briefly lost its mind over a Marmite shortage, when a pricing row between Tesco and Unilever left the jars in short supply. Most people fretted. Gary Lineker, England’s great goalscorer turned broadcaster, simply counted himself lucky. “So relieved this morning that I don’t like marmite,” he tweeted, and in eight words filed himself firmly in the hate camp while the rest of the country panic-bought.
Does Gary Lineker like Marmite?
No, and his timing made the point. His tweet during the 2016 shortage, “So relieved this morning that I don’t like marmite”, is a clean, dated, on-the-record dislike. It is also a very Lineker line: dry, brief, and landed at the right moment, the same instinct that made him such a good poacher in the box. He is not anguished about it, he is just quietly glad the shortage is somebody else’s problem.
Who is Gary Lineker?
Gary Winston Lineker was born on 30 November 1960 in Leicester. He became one of England’s finest strikers, playing for Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur, and winning the Golden Boot at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico as the tournament’s top scorer. He is also famous for something he never did: in a long career he was never once booked, never shown a yellow or red card, a record of good conduct almost unheard of for a forward.
Gary Lineker after football
After retiring in 1994 he became the long-running face of “Match of the Day”, the BBC’s flagship football programme, a job he held for more than two decades. A whole generation knows him better from the sofa than the pitch, and from the Walkers crisps adverts that ran for years. More recently he co-founded a successful podcast company and has been one of the most followed, and most argued-about, figures on British social media. The Marmite tweet is a tiny example of why: even a throwaway line about a spread gets attention when Lineker sends it.
Why sport and Marmite rarely meet
Lineker is a useful entry partly because he is rare. Marmite is rich in the B vitamins and salt that athletes actually need, yet very few sportspeople have ever gone on the record with a real opinion about eating it. The link tends to be an advert or a line of generic nutrition advice rather than a genuine quote. Lineker, who long ago crossed from sport into broadcasting and is never short of an opinion, is one of the few who has actually said something.
Gary Lineker’s career at a glance
- Striker for Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur
- England’s leading scorer of his era; Golden Boot at the 1986 World Cup
- Never booked in his entire professional career
- Presenter of Match of the Day from 1999
- Long-running face of Walkers crisps; later a podcasting entrepreneur
