Gary Lineker says the BBC had tape applied to the inside of his underwear when he famously presented Match of the Day in his pants - as they didn't want to see any offside balls.
Lineker honoured a pledge to do the stunt when his beloved Leicester City won the Premier League three years ago - but Beeb bosses feared viewers might get extended highlights and insisted he have his privates strapped.
Leicester-born Lineker, 58, said: 'Despite the relatively generous coverage afforded by those boxers, the show's wardrobe people applied tape to the inside of the garment to keep it all together and thereby remove all risk of the kind of exposure the BBC prefers to avoid, even after the watershed, and definitely in its sports shows.
'Fussy of them to go to the trouble, you might think. But, on the contrary, I would say it was a sensible precaution.
'I'll confess: at the sight of Alan Shearer's bald pate gleaming at me softly, late in the night, across a hot studio, I can sometimes become a little aroused. But what man wouldn't?'
In his new book with his podcast pal Danny Baker - Behind Closed Doors: Life, Laughs and Football - the former England ace also revealed he was flooded with offers from companies to wear their pants for the dare.
He said: 'Not even presenting Match of the Day in your underpants will give you the rush you got from scoring – which I'm in a unique position to affirm, of course, having done both.
'Ahead of that landmark moment for sports broadcasting (the first Match of the Day of the 2016–17 season), a number of underwear brands got in touch and offered to dress me for the occasion – much as the major fashion houses approach the big stars before the Oscars, I guess.
'Very kind of them, I'm sure, but it probably wouldn't have been in keeping with BBC guidelines on advertising for me to have completed this self-inflicted stunt in sponsored keks.
'As it was, I appeared in a pair of my own white boxers, with a Leicester City badge embroidered on the right leg as a token of my affiliation.'