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Father Ted creator Graham Linehan (Image: PA)
The BAFTA winning co-creator of Father Ted who “lost his livelihood, his marriage and many friends’ for his views on trans issues said there are ‘sacred cows’ where celebrities and professionals and journalists fear to tread.
Once celebrated by the film and TV industry for his award-winning work on sitcoms such as Motherland and the IT Crowd, Linehan’s views first came under fire in March 2018 when he was recovering in hospital from a prostate cancer operation.
While lying in his hospital bed he ‘liked’ a tweet by philosopher and feminist Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans which argued against discrimination of trans people but also argued for the preservation of womens’ rights.
Linehan recalled: “This set off a barrage of unceasing online abuse which continues to this day.”
Since then, Linehan has continued to voice his beliefs and the backlash has followed, online in personal relationships and in his career.
READ MORE ‘Cancelled’ Father Ted creator threatens to sue after show axed
He said the ostracisation he faced has echoes of that experienced by Harry Potter author JK Rowling who has also experienced abuse for her views on trans issues: “There is no volume low enough for people to be able to be critical of trans ideology in order to face criticism.
JK Rowling is unfailing polite and she regularly receives death and rape threats. Even liking a tweet can lead to abuse. The people in my life who didn’t defend me are also silent about JK Rowling.”
But he said he feared the issue went beyond the trans debate and reflected a wider problem in which groups of outspoken people “decide” which side to support and what is acceptable to discuss.
“Certain subjects are turned into third rail issues. For example, what would and should have united us all seeing the atrocious attacks in Israel this week has been reframed by extremist political groups who have set parameters around the conversation so these attacks are not roundly condemned as much they should be. We are living in a permanent state of blackmail.”
He said of the trans position: “Since I saw the science of biology being undermined it makes me wonder what other science is being undermined by tribalism. Liberal consensus and groupthink seems to override commonsense and evidence a lot of the time.”
The 55-year old Irishman claimed his stance on trans stemmed from his wish to defend the rights of women to have their own sports and their own safe private spaces.
Graham Linehan shares his stance on trans lives (Image: SWNS)
“I understand some people have medical procedures because they sadly do not feel they fit into the sex they were born with. But transwomen are not women. We need to say this for the safety of children and women’s rights and to ensure women have equal representation in sports and in public life.
“If we destroy the meaning of the word woman we are reversing all the gains the suffragettes achieved for women, we threaten the safety of single sex spaces and we decimate women’s sports because of the humiliation of women being beaten by men. This goes all the way up to rape crisis centres where women are being refused male free spaces due to trans rights.
“I cannot protect my daughter’s safety with what is being done in the name of trans issues. And some of this is simply opportunistic people who are taking advantage of the exalted level they have been put on. Con men and abusive misogynists are using trans activism as a cover and it is hurting women.”
He is now keen to explain his position as part of his memoirs Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy, which was released last week.
The book recounts how over the past decade an army of critics have branded him transphobic on social media. Pink News, an LGBTQ+ online magazine, have declared him a ‘bigot’ and published more than 75 of articles attacking his position.
He caused a particularly huge row after comparing giving puberty blockers to gender-dysphoric children to Nazi experiments claiming: ‘It is eugenics. The Nazis experimented on gender non-conforming autistic children, and we are experimenting on gender non-conforming autistic children.’
In 2020 he was suspended from X, then Twitter, where he had half a million followers – for posting ‘men aren’t women tho’, in response to a post by the Women’s Institute wishing happy Pride to its trans members. He was reinstated in Elon Musk’s moratorium on what had been deemed controversial accounts.
He said: “The same industry that has fallen for gender ideology is the same industry that loves twitter where people are being banned for fake crimes such as ‘misgendering’. The people behind this do not have physical power but they have the power to cut off your funding and destroy your career.”
He points out the tide may be turning, pointing to the recent support for his beliefs by Conservative politicians such as Miriam Cates, who has criticised some schools for being ‘unscientific’ in their teaching about trans issues.
He believes his views were also vindicated during the row over the trans woman prisoner Isla Bryson who was refused a place in a Scottish female jail after a huge political backlash.
But despite any shifts in the wider political climate, people in his own industry appear to be steadfast in its rejection of him. In August this year the Edinburgh Fringe cancelled a scheduled stand up comedy performance arguing Linehan’s views did not “align” with their overall values.
He says he has been alienated from the industry that made him and from the actors he made famous through his.
“I have lost the fellowship of my fellow comedy writers who have been cowardly. I find it extraordinary that they could stand by and let it happen even though privately some have said they agreed with me. But when it comes to the crunch they won’t say it publicly.”
He also says he has been ‘wokewashed’ from his own work. Linehan, his co-writer Mathews and singer songwriter Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, who wrote the Father Ted theme tune, recently wrote a musical based on the hit 1990s Channel 4 show about a group of Irish priests living on fictional Craggy Island. He believed the musical would have been a huge success and would have made him money – ‘it was going to be my pension’
But the production company that co-owns the rights to the show has since refused to put on the musical.
He said: “It is outrageous, cultural vandalism. I have done nothing wrong.”
Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy (Image: Graham Linehan)
He has had some industry support, however. In 2020 he gathered celebrity friends including writer Ian McEwan, Lionel Shriver, and Susan Hill, actors Griff Rhys Jones, John Cleese and Frances Barber, writer Tom Stoppard to sign a petition condemning the attacks on JK Rowling, from trans activists which include rape and death threats.
Some of those he approached refused to sign, however, which he says he couldn’t understand.
“‘How can you be confused by signing a letter saying JK Rowling should not be receiving death and rape threats?”
Some of his peers have already come under fire. Richard Ayoade, who starred in The IT Crowd, and Jonathan Ross were recently pilloried for endorsing his autobiography.
Despite his problems Linehan still cherishes his relationships with his 18 year old daughter and 16-year-old although he has moved out of the family home and now lives in a flat in London.
His 16-year marriage to fellow comedy writer Helen Serafinowicz collapsed three years ago due to the pressure. This was exacerbated after their private address was released online.
He moved out of the family home in Norwich and eventually relocated to London.
“She was scared. She was justifiably scared. They started to target her. They started to target her family. It just got too much for her.”
He is keen to point out he has never even been subject to an official warning, let alone charged.
Despite all but losing his career and his income he does not regret taking a stance – and he refuses to give up.
“They have taken everything from me. They took my family, my career, my relationships and my financial stability. Before this all I was doing was writing comedy and they destroyed me. I have faced death threats and I have felt very low at times, but the mistake they made is that they gave me nothing to lose. And I will not give up. I will expose hypocrisy and cowardice and I will never give them the satisfaction of killing myself.”
Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy is out now and published by Eye Books Ltd www.eye-books.com
