"My agent sent it through jokingly and he replied, 'Oh yes, Gary's fee will be £50 million!'"
Gary Lineker will have a lot more free time when the current football season ends, with the former England international having revealed last month that he's set to step down from his long-running Match of the Day presenting gig.
But it looks like one thing Lineker won't be filling that extra time with is appearing on reality TV – despite having already been approached for an upcoming season of Celebrity Big Brother.
During a discussion with fellow pundits Micah Richards and Alan Shearer on their popular The Rest Is Football podcast, Lineker revealed that he was recently sounded out about the prospect of appearing on the hit reality series.
"Do you know last week I got requested on Celebrity Big Brother," he explained, to somewhat incredulous reactions from Richards and Shearer.
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"My agent sent it through jokingly, and he replied, 'Oh yes, Gary's fee will be £50 million!'" he added with a smile.
"He did it completely as a joke, obviously, and they came back and said, 'Oh, that's a little bit... it's not within our budget.'"
Shearer then warned him that this would likely be the first of many approaches about his availability, telling Lineker: "You're gonna get asked to go on all of them."
As for Lineker's response? "I can tell you now, don't bother asking..."
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Although Lineker will stop his weekly presenting post on Match of the Day at the end of this season, he will stay on with the BBC through to the 2026 World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico.
He will also front the BBC's FA Cup coverage for 2025/2026, alongside the MOTD Top Ten podcast and the aforementioned The Rest Is Football podcast on BBC Sounds.
Check out more of our Sport coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
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