Forget the Tory Birmingham husting, Guido was privileged to have a ring-side seat at the internecine BBC-on-BBC bias row of the year last night. In the red corner, doing his job and defending BBC impartiality: Neil Henderson, Home and Foreign News Editor & Tomorrow’s Papers Today tweeter; in the blue corner, doing his damndest to undermine the entire BBC: crisp muncher Gary ‘overpaid’ Lineker. Ding ding…

The row started over a day-old tweet from Lineker, who put all his little grey cells towards political commentary to come up with the fair and not-at-all-oversimplified take: “As a politician how could you ever, under any circumstances, bring yourself to vote for pumping sewage into our seas? Unfathomable!” Obviously no politician could – and they haven’t – though the tweet did its job by getting 44,000 likes…

Guido remembers the new BBC director general Tim Davie coming in on a promise of cracking down on BBC stars flouting impartiality rules, such as taking them off Twitter. Fellow BBC employee Neil Henderson made this exact point to Gary, saying he’d be sacked if he tried tweeting such political propaganda:

Unfortunately, it seems Gary is blithely unaware of the fact BBC impartiality applies across all colleagues, not just those in news and current affairs. Guido would be happy to take a look at Lineker’s contract on his behalf…

Neil had one last bite before deleting his spat entirely, probably realising the row was just as bad a look for the BBC as Gary’s unbridled politicking. Henderson correctly asserted: 

Guido looks forward to hearing Tim Davie’s thoughts on all this the next time he’s up in front of the DCMS Select Committee. Usually Guido leaves it to co-conspirators to decide who wins a bitch fight, this time there’s only one answer…