BBC Sport has revealed that they are taking the emergency measure of installing their back up 'Banter Generator' along with a fail safe Stereotyping machine, ahead of England's tie with Germany.
The BBC's technology infrastructure manager, Matthew Haddock, described the system in detail. ‘For the past 44 years we've been archiving cliches, stereotypes and facts about Germany to be used at such events, although the project was started much earlier as an off-shoot of Bletchley Park. The Generators will ensure that when Lawro needs to say something about the Germans he won't be lost for words. For example, by typing in the command 'Steven Gerrard, Penalty box' a phrase of ‘Oh my, Steven Gerrard's spending more time in the Germans' box than Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. That film where we beat the Germans in the War that also ended with us beating the Germans’.
The Generator famously broke down during the Euro '96 match-up leaving John Motson completely stranded. He tried a few improvised lines such as ‘The Germans are pushing through the Midfield like...like...like a tank of some sort. Probably a German one.’, and ‘The German defence here just like it was in Iwo Jima back in 1957’. You can understand why we're employing a backup this year.’