18 March 2023 , 14:32
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Mark Chapman had to brush over an awkward joke from former England goalkeeper Rob Green after making his return to the BBC on Saturday.
Chapman was among the BBC staff who decided not to work last weekend out of solidarity for Gary Lineker. The Match of the Day host was suspended by the broadcaster after refusing to apologise for tweets about the Government’s illegal migrant policy.
The decision caused a huge backlash, with Chapman following Alan Shearer and Ian Wright in standing with Lineker by refusing to fulfil work commitments. Chapman is a regular on the BBC, where he presents Match of the Day 2 and Radio 5 Live’s sports programme on Saturday.
Lineker was reinstated by the BBC earlier this week, with director general Tim Davie forced to backtrack and announce a review into the company’s impartiality guidelines. That allowed Chapman and his colleagues to return to work, with the much-loved broadcaster presenting 5 Live Sport’s programme on Saturday afternoon.
It didn’t take long for the Lineker fiasco to come up, though, with Green making a cheeky comment just a few minutes into the broadcast. The panel were discussing Chris Wilder’s appointment as Watford manager, which came shortly after he appeared on the programme.
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That prompted an opportunistic joke from Green, who said: "I don't know what is more precarious, working for Watford, or working for the BBC?!" Chapman let out a brief laugh before his professionalism kicked into gear. "Moving swiftly on,” he began, before steering the conversation elsewhere.
Mark Chapman was thrown a hospital pass by Rob Green live on the radio (BBC Radio 5 Live)As well as presenting on 5 Live Sport, Chapman will also be on our screens on Saturday evening, having been given the task of presenting Match of the Day ahead of Lineker. He will be fronting the return of the programme at 10.30pm – a week on from its bizarre reduced format.
Last weekend both Match of the Day and Match of the Day 2 were reduced to 20-minute highlights episodes, which did not have a presenter, any pundits or commentators. The BBC was forced into the embarrassing compromise after many of the people who work on the classic programme refused to work.
There were further problems, too, with Football Focus being canned, BBC Radio 5 Live affected and the WSL coverage vastly reduced. Robbie Savage, who usually presents the 606 call-in show with Chris Sutton, explained the chaos in his column for Mirror Football this week.
“Sometimes you find yourself in an impossible position which is not of your making and you feel helpless to do anything about it,” he wrote.
“It was only around noon on the Saturday lunchtime – about seven hours before the phone-in lines were due to open – that I heard Sport on Five was being forced off the air and I realised we had to make a choice between solidarity or being ostracised.”