Gary Lineker breaks silence on porn scandal and says BBC has ‘nothing to apologise for’

GARY LINEKER has insisted that BBC has “nothing to apologise for” after last night’s porn noise controversy.

Viewers were left stunned as a bizarre “porn noise” interrupted their coverage of the Wolves vs Liverpool FA Cup clash.

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Pundits Lineker and Alan Shearer struggled to hide their embarrassment as they were forced to compete with an odd noise that viewers likened to a porn film.

It was later revealed that a notorious prankster had hidden a mobile phone on the TV set at Molineux for Liverpool’s FA Cup win at Wolves. 

Daniel Jarvis, who is a serial pitch invader, then activated the sexy sounds ring-tone simply by ringing the mobile as he watched the live pictures on BBC1.

That led to the BBC being forced into releasing a statement issuing a grovelling apology.

However, Lineker does not believe that an apology was in order as he insisted that he could see the funny side of the incident.

He told Newsnight: “If you told me this morning that tonight I’d be on Newsnight talking about a porn scandal I would have been terrified.

“When it started, I did recognise that sound. I think we’ve all been done with that when you open up a WhatsApp or something.

“It was so loud I couldn’t hear anything that either Danny Murphy or even when I spoke to Alan Shearer. I could hardly hear what they said when the thing was going on.” I have to say I think it’s funny.”

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The 62-year-old added: “The BBC have issued some sort of apology, I know not why. It’s certainly got nothing to apologise for.

“It was quite hard to carry on the pre-match build-up and take it seriously when this was going on in the background.

“It added to the whole game actually. I don’t think anyone cared for the game. We had a screamer of a goal which was kind of the tone of the whole show in some ways.

As pranks go, it was a good one and credit to them. It was funny I thought.”

The BBC’s apology read: “We apologise to any viewers offended during the live coverage of the football this evening. We are investigating how this happened.”

The honking noises started just moments before the FA Cup third round replay was about to get underway.

It was first played as Lineker went live to co-commentator Shearer who was waiting to speak to him in the stadium.

Lineker started laughing and said: “I don’t know who’s making that noise.

“I don’t know if somebody is sending a joke on someone’s phone, I don’t know if you heard it at home.”

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Being the professional that he is, Lineker continued to present the show impeccably despite the sound simply not going away as it kept stopping and then restarting almost immediately.

Lineker took to Twitter to reveal exactly what had happened by uploading a photo of a phone taped to the back of the set.

The caption said: “Well, we found this taped to the back of the set. As sabotage goes it was quite amusing.”

Serial pitch invader Jarvis claimed responsibility for the incident.

The YouTuber, whose account name is Jarvo69, hosted a live stream as he hijacked the BBC’s coverage.

He proudly announced at the beginning of the video: “Here we are, we have set up a phone with a loud sex noise in the BBC studios at the Wolves v Liverpool FA Cup replay.”

Jarvo69 watches the coverage with his phone held carefully in hand, waiting for the moment to pull off his practical joke.

He has also now posted a short video to Twitter showing himself in the Beeb studio before coverage began.

He wrote: “Yes, it was me that pranked the BBC Match of the Day with the sex phone. The video coming soon!!!! Best prankster ever!!!”

Jarvis has a long history of big stunts during sports events, and once even invaded the stage on the X Factor in 2016.