Gary Lineker has revealed the secret behind his now infamous 'dad joke' endings to Match of the Day with the host also revealing the origin of the decision.
Lineker has been the main host of the iconic BBC football show since 1999, taking over from broadcasting legend Des Lynam who hosted from 1988-1999.
The former Leicester, Everton, and Spurs striker has seen himself become the BBC's top earner due to his success on the show with a reported £1.35m salary from the PSB.
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There are two certainties when you tune into Match of the Day, one is that you will see detailed highlights of all the day's Premier League action, and the other is that Lineker will end the show with a cheesy pun.
In a recent episode of The Rest is Football, Lineker shed light on exactly how these weekly puns and jokes are generated.
When posed with the question 'Does Gary come up with all the jokes at the end of every Match of the Day episode?', Lineker revealed he has help from a secret ghostwriter.
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"I'm going to share a little secret here, our editor, Richard Hughes, and I have a kind of disease an infection, as we just can't help but make dad jokes," Lineker joked.
"He's exactly the same as me and we basically come up with them together. 50% of the time it will be him and 50% of the time it will be me, and you two will know that [Alan Shearer and Micah Richards]
"We both sit down at the end of all the games being played and we work out what's the big story to close the show, and then we think of some crappy, cheesy, and occasionally funny pun.
"I always think if you're going to do a pun, make it really, really bad or really, really cheesy because that in itself is fun," he explained.
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Lineker also revealed how the tradition started, with the decision to make the jokes coming down to former host Des Lynam.
"It really started because Des Lynam used to think of clever little endings and funny endings and he always said to me 'Don't be afraid to have a little fun, sometimes it will work and sometimes it won't but it will make you memorable'", he concluded.
Tom Jenkins