Lineker thought he had special BBC Twitter agreement - agent

Gary Lineker thought he had a "special agreement" with the BBC's director general to tweet about refugees and immigration, his agent has said.

In a piece in the New Statesman, Jon Holmes has described the crisis talks held with BBC bosses during last week's stand-off.

He said he warned them that suspending Lineker could be damaging, hours before a staff walk-out began.

The BBC apologised for the disruption and will review its social media rules.

On last week's row, Mr Holmes said: "Gary Lineker, with whom I've worked since 1980, had tweeted about the policy, reiterating his support for refugees.

"Gary takes a passionate interest in refugees and immigration and, as he saw it, had a special agreement with Tim Davie, the BBC's director general, to tweet about these issues."

He said social media guidelines for some BBC staff were "a bit vague", but said his client "assiduously avoids" appearing on political programmes.

Mr Holmes said Lineker asked him to "sort it out" when the row first erupted, and "initial contact with various BBC staff hadn't produced a result".

Lineker was then suspended over the tweet, in which he called the government's new asylum policy "immeasurably cruel" and said the language used around it was "not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s".

His suspension sparked a boycott by presenters which severely impacted football coverage for two days.

The BBC confirmed it had asked Lineker to step back from his TV duties in a statement last Friday.

"We have never said that Gary should be an opinion-free zone, or that he can't have a view on issues that matter to him, but we have said that he should keep well away from taking sides on party political issues or political controversies," the statement read.

A meeting with BBC executives last Friday "didn't achieve much", Mr Holmes wrote. His warning that taking Lineker off air "would not be helpful" was not heeded, he added.

Lineker will return to screens this weekend after the row was resolved. An independent review of social media rules at the BBC was also announced.

BBC director general Tim Davie has said he is committed to looking at how the corporation's impartiality guidelines apply to freelance staff, acknowledging there are "grey areas".

After the agreement with Lineker was reached, Mr Davie apologised to licence fee payers and BBC employees, acknowledging "this has been a difficult period for staff".

He denied his deal to get the presenter back on air was a "climbdown", telling BBC News: "I've always said we needed to take proportionate action.

"For some people, by the way, we've taken too severe action... others think we're being too lenient."

Lineker won't return to Match of the Day this weekend as he was already scheduled to miss the show. Instead, he'll be presenting the BBC's live coverage of Manchester City v Burnley in the FA Cup on Saturday afternoon.

Dame Melanie Dawes, the chief executive of broadcast regulator Ofcom, said the row goes "straight to the heart" of the BBC's wider reputation.

BBC executives "need to be weighing freedom of expression alongside the wide reputation they have for impartiality," she told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee earlier this week.