Janet Christie’s Mum’s the Word - Why Lineker and language matter

Mum's the Word: Larry the Downing Street Cat will not be presenting Match of the Day. Pic: Susannah Ireland/AFP via Getty Images

I was going to talk about Mother’s Day, and I will, but first I have to get the Gary Lineker thing off my chest first. Not the fact that he spoke out. He’s not a newsreader (just doing their job like Fiona Bruce) but a media personality and the Twitter cat is out of the bag - even Downing Street’s Larry tweets and confirmed he would not be presenting Match of the Day, which is a shame, but he’s probably hunkered down indoors since it emerged there was a suggestion among government that domestic cats be euthanized during Covid. You wonder if the decision to reinstate Lineker was coloured by the fact that the BBC’s attempt to claim the impartiality highground was sabotaged by the revelations of its high heid yins having in the past donated to the Tory party and facilitated a loan for Boris.

What Lineker said about the language that government uses struck a chord with me and reminded me how when Brexit was first on the agenda Youngest came home from primary school and said: “I didn’t realise my dad was a migrant”. Not illegal, you understand, plus he’s European and white so that’s probably OK-ish. For now. But still a migrant.

“Oh, neither did I,” I said. “Never thought about it.” But it reminded me how he’d suggested the kids have my surname partly because his was “foreign”, despite his decades here. Then Brexit forced such classifications into the open and he made sure our children have dual nationality.

“If I study in Europe next year I won’t be using my British passport,” Youngest says. “Then I won’t need a Visa and everything’s easier. You’ll have to queue at border control when you visit. Probably for ages, lol.”

Sigh. But what’s an inconvenience compared to people’s ordeal getting here and what they’re fleeing?

Anyway, for Mother’s Day Eldest Child and his partner took me and her mum, along with Youngest Child, to paint pottery, and it was smashing. With the Lineker row raging, I noted that our party of potters are all from here, but among our roots are English, German, Welsh, Nigerian and thanks to Eldest having my DNA tested (cheek, I’m definitely their mother) I know know I have lots of Celt. Oh and some North African and Senegambian.

“Cool,” says Eldest. “How come?”

“No idea,” I tell him. “Can’t remember anyone ever mentioning it. People never used to bother.” Not like now.