Graham Linehan interview in The Times (17 March 2023)

called someone a “pronoun wanker”

I hope he used the Inbetweeners GIF

I personally think that how he expresses himself is fine - I would not have his courage and humour. When people accuse him of being vicious, I personally see someone with an eye for the ridiculous getting to the empty heart of this nonsense. It's just that it's so exposing, they can't bear it.

Same here - I read it earlier and thought it came across as incredibly sneery in tone and in places quite ill informed!

I think he is a talented man.

I don't agree with him on everything.

I believe his daughter will think very highly of him when she is older.

Quite @RoyalCorgi wete up against people who go around with signs saying “decapitate TERFS”, who have hounded ppl out of their jobs, who have sent vile rape & death threats online and in person, who regularly indulge in spurious legal cases because the process is the punishment and who posted happy dancing skeletons when a young woman in her 30s died of brain cancer - and we should watch our language???

fuck right off

I don't myself agree with everything Glinner has done and said, but he's a brave and principled man who didn't deserve to be treated like he has been by his peers. I think in time he will be vindicated.

DP and I are currently rewatching all of Father Ted. So good, he's such a talented comic writer.

It was cancelled from all 4 but still on there. Hilarious and perceptive.

It's the best one! The elders of the internet one. I bought the DVD second hand so I would have it even if it got cancelled on all the streaming services.

I admire Graham so much. Everything he is quoted as saying in that article is so thoughtful and true. It amazes me that a journalist can write about someone who has had all their comedy work cancelled and been endlessly hounded and bullied and say that people question their mental health and whether they are obsessed. It is a miracle that Graham is still standing strong after everything that has been thrown at him. I think a lot of others do not speak up because they know the backlash would break them.

There are certainly a few people on the other side of this debate who are obsessed. Anyone who thinks their young son is a girl for starters.

It is absolutely symptomatic of the hypocrisy of these people that they are happy with a musical celebrating a man who sexually abused children, but not with collaborating with a man who speaks out about the sexual abuse of children.

The Andrew Billen article speaks a lot about Linehan's use of intemperate language in this debate. And there are two points to make about that. One is that the language he uses is as nothing to the language coming from the other side - the endless vicious threats of rape, murder and so on. Linehan, for example, has never called for his opponents to be decapitated.

The other is that the extremity of the misogyny and homophobia of trans ideology arguably means that intemperate language is required. Are we really supposed to be polite about people with extremist views?

I was very interested to read Jimmy Mulville's quote

On the whole this feature just went over old ground really, it felt like I'd read it all before. But that's the bit that stood out as so unfair. Glinner "has a right to speak his mind and is sincere", it's "tragic", the show would be a hit, "I hate cancel culture", but we've already prepared the statements cutting you loose.

So much contradiction. A rotten way to treat him.

Payday today - that reminds me there's some gardening to be done.

I love both Glinner and Stock. In a sane society there's room for many voices.

Did you know there's a Michael Jackson musical on the way?

Interesting that the delicate pure souls of theatre land can countenance that, but not Father Ted???

Interesting article. And very sad.

I think Andrew Billen was not the best person to do the interview because, having read previous pieces by him, he is at best ambivalent on the trans issue, at worst seems to think that it's a generational divide, with older people on the wrong side of history.

I was very interested to read Jimmy Mulville's quote. He clearly thinks the Father Ted musical script is great and that it would do well in the West End - as long as Linehan's name isn't associated with it. I'm not sure he's right about that. Who are the main Father Ted fans - young people, sympathetic to trans ideology? Or older people, who watched Father Ted in the 1990s? And who are the main demographic for West End theatre - older people or young people? The trouble with Mulville is that he imagines that everyone thinks the same way as people who work in theatre or post angry tweets on Twitter, whereas in fact the vast majority of people (certainly the vast majority of the theatre-going demographic) either couldn't give a damn about the issue or are actively sympathetic to Linehan.

Also interesting that Billen couldn't get anyone apart from Kathleen Stock to speak on the record. I thought Stock's quote was quite generous, actually, given that the two have argued in the past.

I thought Billen's comments about the dating app were odd. Clearly Linehan was simply taking the piss out of all the heterosexual men forcing their way into a lesbian-only space. Why would you consider this cruel to those men - instead of being angry at those men for trying to force same-sex attracted women to have sex with them?

The final line of that article tells me this fight is a long way from over. The journalist seems to think that unless Glinner stops talking about this issue and even his own cancellation then he won't find work again. Maybe he's right but it's a shocking admission that he thinks the people who have let Glinner down and enabled the cancellation will continue to sideline him if he dares to talk about how appallingly he has been treated by people he once thought were friends. I'd like to think that those people feel ashamed.

There is no doubt in my mind that Father Ted the musical would be hugely popular and profitable. I can't respect the stupidity of the people who are preventing it from happening.

I don't mind Kathleen Stocks comments, she was honest about why they don't get on and she is convinced of his sincerity even if she doesn't approve of his methods but at least she hasn't lied about him to justify her opinion. I'm bored with the idea that there is only one way to raise awareness about the erosion of women's rights and the harm gender ideology does to children so I'm glad that KS acknowledges she probably wouldn't reach the people Glinner can.

I hope that, in the not too distant future, Glinner can get back to doing what he does best and claim his life back. No one should have to pay the price he has for telling the truth.

Without Glinner I wouldn’t have become aware of this issue when I did.

he’s been absolutely monstered and yes on occasion he puts things in a way I wouldn’t but you know what he’s lost everything and for what? Pointing out that men cannot magically become women, that women’s rights cesse to exist once men can identify into them, that there are safeguarding flags everywhere

he could have buckled and recanted for an easier life but he hasn’t. Huge respect for that.

Democracy needs people to speak, totalitarianism demands people’s silence

this

and thats what people like glinner do even when it’s incredibly bad for them

Have just rewatched the IT Crowd episode entitled “The Speech” (season 3, Netflix)

It was cancelled from all 4 but still on there. Hilarious and perceptive.

Glinner and is a good 'un. And I'm disappointed in Stock.

Haven't read yet but had fingers crossed this was Hadley's work. Would love to see that conversation!

I’m clearly going to have to re-read this great article after coffee, because I thought it was completely the opposite!

Great article. Cancel culture is shit.

Andrew Billen at the Times clearly thinks he’s landed some validating coup by getting Kathleen Stock to denounce Linehan on the record- saying what, that she agrees with what Linehan is saying but she doesn’t much like how he says it? So what? I think he’s a professionally brilliant communicator and comedian. So what? Nobody can or would say he’s lying about what he’s said or he is a hate monger, because he’s evidently not.

And that was the very worst Billen could dredge up. Hopefully The Times’ comment section will show Billen’s editors that Billen wasted a huge opportunity to write something intelligent about the fact that Linehan is speaking the opposite of hate, what he says is backed up by facts, most people would agree with what he says so it’s actually uncontroversial… and yet a shitty UK industry has nonetheless blackballed him and why is that?

I can well appreciate that for anyone in hard professional times it’s hard to have faith in yourself and to think much, much bigger professionally but if Linehan could do that now he’d be able to demonstrate his audience pulling power with numbers and his industry would all be rushing to add him back into their UK contact books and say that they’ve always really said he’s always been a stalwart of women and children’s rights and free speech.

His misfortune has been to come from a professional background that’s all about keeping rivals out- that’s why his support has come from people who Linehan’s not competing for work from. We need all the talented pro choice, anti- misogynist, pro-safeguarding men out talking in the public sphere we can get, Linehan’s wit gets an audience that we need to wake up (make and female). So more power to his elbow.

Graham Linehan is plainly right. He’s got more moral fibre and integrity in his toenail clippings than those dolts in the media who still inexplicably believe he’s cancelled. No he’s bloody not cancelled. They are on the sexist, homophobic, wildly misogynistic authoritarian wrong side of history.

Andrew Billen’s his mealy mouthed attempt to interview Linehan as a good for clicks while condemning him (for what real transgression exactly?) on faint praise is merely showing his own journalistic efforts towards misogynistic and authoritarian appeasement. The shame is Billen’s. Linehan has done nothing wrong in speaking up in support of women and children.

People love Linehan’s comedy writing work. Those who share his views in gender identity politics also know a feminist ally, supporter of safeguarding and freedoms of speech when they see one. I think Linehan’s real crime has just been to point out than men can be dangerous. He’s said the quiet bits out loud and worse, said it wittily and engagingly too . That’s so uncomfortable for a lot of people who should really be looking hard at themselves to think why they feel that way.

His speaking out makes the sheep at the top who are only there for the financial bottom line, and who believe what some out of touch privileged teenager tells them is the real world (because it’s on their social media feed); fear for their audience figures. When neither those big cheeses nor their interns can read a room.

it reminds me of Chris Morris and Cake with Linehan’s words as the Cake. Unfortunately though for Linehan, its worse for him than just being embarrassing and showing up personal gullibility and the mercenary professional scrabble to get ahead.

Linehan works in a fiercely back stabby and ultra competitive writing and producing world- like academia, like the arts and theatre- where the rationale to pick off one big beast like him leaves more room for the established figures who want more and for the up and comers growing desperate for their big break to take attention and get work. So of course they’re all going to gun for him to keep him out. Even though the paying public would want to watch him.

I'm such a massive fan of Glinner's comedy writing, I would absolutely love to see him working again. In the meantime I follow all his ro-women work, and am grateful for it.

As for the Ted musical, if it happened without Glinner, there's no way I would go and see it.

I think Graham is an important voice and it's a travesty that his involvement in the fight against:

• stopping kids going through puberty
• men in women's spaces
• men coercing lesbians
• the tearing down of child safeguarding
• woke homophobia etc.

If anything, I don't think he goes far enough! It doesn't really matter if a man is genuine in his belief that he is "really a woman" or is using trans as a cloak for nefarious means. One is a man pretending to be a woman and one is a man pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. Neither is a woman and we don't want them in our spaces.

What's happened to Graham is not right. It doesn't matter if you don't agree with his views or feel suspicious of a man who is taking on this fight. No one should have their future taken because they question something that makes very little sense.
I've subscribed to his sub stack, which I hope helps.

Excellent article. It was very good of Kathleen Stock to provide a quote and I think she was astute about his appeal, particularly to blokes who are new to all this and aren't put off by the lack of performative kindness.

What's happened to Graham - his career, his family - as a result of his support for women and children is shocking. I can't think of a better example of the cruelty of TRAs and their determination to completely annihilate anyone who opposes them.