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If you are of a certain age, you will know that crap football pundits were in existence long before Jermaine Jenas, Steve McManaman, Glenn Hoddle and Michael Owen. All decent footballers and in the case of Glenn Hoddle, I’d say a great footballer. But put a microphone in their face and they confidently spurt out bollocks. One of my least favourite pundits was the former Liverpool centre half Mark Lawrenson, who was axed by the BBC in 2022. Lawro, as he was amusingly nicknamed, has an explanation for his axing: (It’s) “because I’m 65 [years old] and a white male.” Is that so?
In the same way I can’t prove Lawrenson wasn’t axed because he is 65 and a white male, he can’t prove that he was. But then he goes full-on bonkers:
“Well I’m 65 and a white male, so I was let go. Has it gone woke? It is top of the woke league. They are frightened to death, absolutely and totally frightened to death.
You have seen the stuff with Gary Lineker and obviously people at the head of the BBC, I think day by day, I think the integrity of the corporation gets chipped off.
It used to be absolutely fantastic but they are woke, plus 100%.”
At this point, let us remind ourselves of the correct definition of the adjective ‘woke’:
Unless you are some kind of right-wing bigot, like a GB News presenter who has interviewed people like … er … Mark Lawrenson, you would think that being woke was A Very Good Thing, but I suppose if you prefer to be ill-informed, out-of-date and not alert to injustice in society, especially racism, then maybe not. Yet, Lawrenson appeared to contradict himself when said this:
“In all my time at the BBC, nobody ever said ‘you can’t say this or that’, but the ‘woke’ thing drives me bonkers. I’ve been here for 20-odd years, I think I might know what to say and what not to say.” Well, that’s good. No one has ever said ‘you can’t say this or that’. But look at this excerpt from The Guardian:
‘He then gave an example of what he considered a “very early woke moment” from 25 years ago. Lawrenson claimed that when commentating on a Bradford City match in the days after the death of Princess Diana, he was advised by an editor to “not mention the wall” when describing free kicks.’
Hmm. So no one said ‘you can’t say this or that’ but an unnamed editor, back in what would have been 1997, supposedly said Lawrenson should “not mention the wall” when describing free kicks. Again, I cannot prove that an unnamed editor did not say that, but unless Lawrenson adds to his claim, I call bollocks. It was never said, it never happened, Lawrenson made it up. “A very early woke moment” it definitely wasn’t if you are using the literal definition of woke and not the right-wing bigot’s version. But Lawro doesn’t seem to understand what woke means. He thinks it’s a bad thing.
I have no idea why the BBC got shot of Lawrenson but I have a very different view of him as a pundit. Unlike his Liverpool centre back and punditry partner Alan Hansen, I found no depth to his analysis. It was all lightweight banter, telling the viewer what they had already seen, always with one eye on another crap joke. Where Hansen showed the whys and wherefores, Lawrenson didn’t add anything to the picture. And when he was on the radio, he couldn’t create a picture, like all the best commentators and pundits do.
I can’t know why the BBC retired Lawrenson but I can’t say I was disappointed. I always found his schtick tiresome and, as I have already pointed out, he added next to nothing to what we could already see. Perhaps the powers-that-be – and I would imagine those so-called powers would be at a very low level at the corporation – thought the same.
You could argue, with good reason in my view, that some of the current generation of BBC pundits are no better than Lawrenson and in terms of the aforementioned Jenas markedly worse but sometimes a change is as good as a rest, whatever that means.
Great pundits go on forever. The late, great Jimmy Armfield carried on working at BBC Radio Five Live well into his seventies, always giving the listener a fascinating insight to what he was watching, painting pictures with his words. To me, Lawro wasn’t remotely in his class, he was essentially on an endless greatest hits tour and if I had been in charge of BBC Radio Five Live, I’d have put him out to grass years ago. But then, I am totally woke and proud of it.
And anyway, once you’ve appeared on GB News, you’ve rather given the game away as to who you really are, part of the hard right establishment and in the home for the hard of thinking. It’s such a shame to see someone trash their reputation on the altar of hate and bigotry but if that’s how you want to be remembered, so be it. Move along, nothing to see here.
