Match of the Day's Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer join in the W1A fun
The BBC Sport presenters put in excellent turns in series three of the spoof BBC satire
W1A returns next week with the third – and probably last – series looking at the brilliant BBC head of values Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) and the rest of the idiots working at Broadcasting House.
In the first episode, Auntie Beeb wants to thwart a cross-dressing footballer’s discrimination allegations with a last-minute, PR-friendly appearance as a pundit on Match of the Day.
And of course that means getting the recalcitrant footballer – Ryan Chelford played by Ben Batt - to appear alongside the real Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer on the show.
The pair do put in pretty good performances – even if they were only playing themselves.
Writer John Morton tells RadioTimes.com: “They were good. The slight worry is that when you do that, people play heightened versions of themselves. They filmed it the Saturday evening before they did Match of the Day properly and they did it well. I told them just to look at him and they did.”
As for other celebrities making cameos, Claudia Winkleman, Jeremy Paxman and Brian Cox are due to appear as themselves in upcoming episodes. Paxman and Cox will be seen in episode four shooting selfies of themselves to help promote Siobhan Sharpe's new initiative BBC Me, says Morton.
BBC Me is meant to revolutionise everything the Corporation does with a website where viewers can upload and curate their own content.
But does that sound familiar?
As Ian Fletcher tells Siobhan in a rare challenge to the PR Queen: “So what we’re talking about here…it’s essentially a version of YouTube isn’t it?”
W1A series 3 starts on BBC2 on Monday 18th September at 10pm on BBC2
