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Graham Linehan

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Graham Linehan
Linehan in 2013
Birth nameGraham George Linehan
BornMay 1968 (age 56)
Dublin, Ireland
MediumTelevision
NationalityIrish
EducationCatholic University School
Years active1991–present
GenresObservational comedy, surreal humour
Spouse
Helen Serafinowicz
​
​
(m. 2004; div. 2020)​
Children2
Notable works and rolesFather Ted, Black Books, The IT Crowd

Graham George Linehan (/ˈlɪnəhæn/; born May 1968)[1][2] is an Irish comedy writer and anti-transgender activist. He created or co-created the sitcoms Father Ted (1995–1998), Black Books (2000–2004), and The IT Crowd (2006–2013), and he has written for shows including Count Arthur Strong, Brass Eye and The Fast Show. Early in his career, he partnered with fellow writer, Arthur Mathews. Linehan has won five BAFTA awards, including Best Writer, Comedy, for The IT Crowd in 2014.

After an episode of The IT Crowd was criticised as transphobic, Linehan became involved in anti-transgender activism. He argues that transgender activism endangers women, and he has likened the use of puberty blockers to Nazi eugenics. Linehan says his views have lost him work and ended his marriage.

Early life

Linehan was born in Dublin in 1968.[1] He attended Catholic University School, a Roman Catholic secondary school for boys in Dublin.[3]

Comedy career

In the 1980s, Linehan joined the staff of the Dublin politics and music magazine Hot Press, where he met his future writing partner, Arthur Mathews.[3][4] In their early collaborations, they created segments in sketch shows including Alas Smith and Jones, Harry Enfield & Chums, The All New Alexei Sayle Show, The Day Today and the Ted and Ralph characters in The Fast Show. They continued their collaboration with Paris[5] (one series, 1994), Father Ted (three series, 1995–1998),[6][7][8] and the first series of the sketch show Big Train.[9] They also wrote the "Dearth of a Salesman" episode for the series Coogan's Run, which featured the character Gareth Cheeseman. In late 2003, Linehan and Mathews were named one of the 50 funniest acts to work in television by The Observer.[10] Father Ted won BAFTA awards for Best Comedy in 1996 and 1999.[11]

Graham Linehan with Jon Ronson at TAM London 2010

Linehan wrote for the satirical series Brass Eye (1997), Blue Jam (1997–1999) and Jam (2000).[12] With the actor Dylan Moran, he created the sitcom Black Books (2000–2004).[13] Linehan wrote and directed the 2006 Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd, in which he sought to move away from the British trend towards mockumentary comedies. Unlike many series of the time, it was recorded before a studio audience.[14][15] In November 2008, he was awarded an International Emmy for The IT Crowd.[16] In 2013, he wrote and directed the sitcom The Walshes. He co-wrote the first series of the BBC sitcom Motherland and directed its pilot episode.[17] In 2014, Linehan won his fifth BAFTA, for Best Writer, Comedy, for his work on The IT Crowd. He was also nominated for Count Arthur Strong.[18]

In 2018, Linehan and Mathews announced plans for a Father Ted musical.[9] Linehan said it would finish the series as they had planned it before the death of the lead actor, Dermot Morgan.[19] The musical was cancelled by producers following the controversy over Linehan's views on transgender rights.[20]

In December 2024, Linehan announced that he would be relocating to Arizona to work on a new sitcom, as well as setting up a production company with Rob Schneider and Andrew Doyle.[21]

Television appearances

Both Linehan and Mathews have made cameos in programmes they have written. They also made an appearance in the sitcom I'm Alan Partridge as two Irish TV producers considering Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) for a contract.[12]

Linehan has also appeared in The Day Today and in two episodes of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and has had cameos in Black Books (series one, episode two, as "I love books" Guy, and series one, episode five as Fast Food Customer), and the Father Ted episodes "Good Luck Father Ted", "Entertaining Father Stone", "Flight Into Terror", "Cigarettes, Alcohol and Rollerblading" and "Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep". He had cameos in four episodes of The IT Crowd: as Messy Joe's Restaurant Musician, in series one, episode three; the blind sorcerer, in series two, episode six; as a member of the audience for Jen's speech, in series three, episode four; and as Beth Gaga Shaggy, in series four, episode three. He appeared in the Identity Parade round of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He also appeared in the pilot of Little Britain, as well as in series one, episode four, as a bystander who gets in the way of character Kenny Craig when he is attempting to hypnotise, from a distance, a man whose car he has crashed into. He also appeared in series one, episode five, in which he played a journalist called Roy Sloan (from Whizzer and Chips) during a conference with Prime Minister Michael Stevens (Anthony Head).

In 2007, a documentary about Linehan, his life and his career was produced by Wildfire Films for RTÉ One. This documentary explored the art, craft and deeply competitive business of creating contemporary television comedy. The programme featured interviews with several of the UK's most successful television comedy writers and performers including Steve Coogan, Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Paul Whitehouse, Griff Rhys Jones and Ardal O'Hanlon, all of whom have worked with Linehan. It was directed by Adrian McCarthy and produced by Martha O'Neill and Adam Rynne.

Linehan was one of the writers interviewed by Charlie Brooker in 2008 in a special interview episode of the fifth series of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe programme, and again on Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe in 2010. In 2011, Linehan appeared with several members of the cast in Channel 4's Father Ted Night, an evening of the writer's favourite episodes and two retrospective documentaries. He also appeared as a guest panellist on Have I Got News for You in 2011 and again in 2012, and he made his debut as a guest on the BBC show QI in the 11th series (K series) in 2013, receiving a score of −19.

Memoir

Linehan's memoir, Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy, was published in October 2023.[22] The month before publication, it had the second-highest number of pre-orders for a book on Amazon.[23][24] It reached number ten on the Sunday Times bestseller list after it was published.[22] Linehan wrote of his childhood, career, and his five years as an anti-transgender activist.[25]

Reviewing Tough Crowd in The Guardian, Fiona Sturges wrote that while Linehan's account of his comedy career has "verve and charm", the memoir "reads less like the story of a man heroically cleaving to his principles than a document of a peculiar and self-defeating obsession, a sad coda to a once towering talent".[25] In a review in The Critic, Ben Sixsmith described Tough Crowd as "very entertaining" with "some valuable insights into comedy", but that Linehan "admits to losing his rag in a way that might not always be productive".[26] In The Irish Times, Houman Barekat wrote that the memoir had "two distinct narratives", concluding that "Tough Crowd is a discomfiting read not because it contains hard-hitting home truths, but because its author clearly hasn’t worked through his issues".[27] For The Spectator Debbie Hayton wrote that "This is a book of two halves" and that it "may well appeal to two completely different audiences", concluding that "if they want to understand the man they need to read it all."[28] Louis Chilton of The Independent described the book as "a strange, sad read ... that crumbles under the slightest scrutiny".[29]

Other work

Linehan's children voiced characters in the 2012 Adventure Time episode "Goliad", with Linehan directing the children while taking the producers' instructions over the phone. He planned to write a sequel episode, and sent versions of the story to the production team.[30] The episode was never made as Adventure Time ended in 2018.[citation needed] In 2023, Linehan performed a stand-up comedy set at the Backyard Comedy Club in London.[20]

Anti-transgender activism

Linehan is involved in anti-transgender activism.[31] He began making anti-trans statements[clarification needed] online after the 2008 episode "The Speech" of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, was widely criticised as transphobic and sexist.[32][20] Critics[who?] said it used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women.[33] The episode features a man who learns that his girlfriend is transgender and gets into a fight with her.[34][35][36] Channel 4 removed the episode from syndication and streaming in 2020.[34] Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response, arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.[37][36]

Linehan said he was sceptical of gender self-identification, objecting to "privileged white people saying you must accept anyone who says they are a woman". He said that "anyone suffering from gender dysphoria needs to be helped and supported", but he voiced concern over early transgender intervention for children.[36] He used the social network Twitter to criticise "trans ideology", which he believes misrepresents transgender people and lesbians.[38]

Before first Twitter ban

In 2018, Linehan praised anti-transgender protesters at that year's London Pride event who had carried banners and flyers saying that "transactivism erases lesbians", calling them "heroes".[39][40][41] Later that year, Stephanie Hayden, a transgender woman, sued Linehan for harassment. Hayden alleged that Linehan had shared photos on Twitter of Hayden's family and her life before transition, suggested she was a criminal, and repeatedly misgendered and deadnamed her.[42][43] Linehan in turn alleged that Hayden publicised several private addresses linked to his family to silence him.[44] Police issued Linehan a verbal warning not to contact Hayden.[45]

In a December 2018 interview with Derrick Jensen, Linehan said: "I'm now in a position where I can answer the question honestly of 'if you were around at the time of something terrible happening like Nazism, or whatever it happened to be, would you be one of the people who said "no, this is wrong", despite being opposed?'" He also said the trans movement provides "cover" for "fetishists, con men, and simply abusive misogynists".[46][47][48] In an interview with the BBC television programme Newsnight in February 2020, Linehan said that the Tavistock Centre's practice of treating children with puberty blockers such as Lupron was comparable to Nazi eugenics and experiments on children.[49] Following this interview, Eric Pickles, the United Kingdom Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues, accused Linehan of trivialising the Holocaust.[50]

In January 2019, Linehan expressed concern over the news that Mermaids, a charitable advocacy organisation for transgender children and teenagers, was to receive a £500,000 lottery grant to open clinics around the United Kingdom. He posted to the blogging website Mumsnet encouraging its users to lobby the National Lottery Community Fund to reverse its decision.[51][52] The grant was reviewed and went ahead.[51][53] In response to Linehan, YouTuber Hbomberguy held a 57-hour fundraising livestream that raised £270,000 more for Mermaids.[54][55] The same year, British journalist Dawn Foster accused Linehan and others of targeting a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) employee who had been responsible for hiring model and activist Munroe Bergdorf, a transgender woman. Foster called the online abuse "transphobic" and "flatly homophobic". Journalist Chris Godfrey called the treatment of the employee "insidious homophobia".[56]

In June 2020, Linehan criticised comments about author J. K. Rowling after she made comments that were called transphobic. He linked to a blog post featuring screenshots of abuse Rowling had received, describing those who wrote them as "ignoring the abuse received by women who speak out against gender ideology" and "literally useless".[57] Hozier, tagged in Linehan's tweets due to his trans-rights advocacy, responded by saying Linehan was conducting an "obsessive little culture war".[57]

Twitter ban and evasions

On 27 June 2020, Linehan's Twitter account was permanently suspended after what Twitter called "repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation".[38] In December, Linehan evaded the suspension with an account posing as a transgender man. He used the account to call Colm O'Gorman "a traitor to women, gay people and yourself" for signing an open letter published by the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland.[58] The account was banned but Linehan said he had created another.[59]

In February 2021, Linehan created a fake account on the lesbian dating app Her and publicly posted screenshots of non-binary people and trans women using it. The developers of Her clarified that transgender women are welcome on the app.[60] In March 2021, Linehan gave oral evidence to the Communications and Digital Committee of the House of Lords on the subject of freedom of expression online, discussing his Twitter ban.[19][61]

In an interview in the Irish Independent that month, Linehan ruled out working with Channel 4 again as they would not return the controversial IT Crowd episode to broadcast, and he said he would not work with the BBC as they had depicted a transgender lesbian couple, which Linehan described as "a heterosexual couple", in a CBeebies video.[19] Ahead of the 2022 Australian federal election in May, Linehan used his online platforms to rally international support for the Liberal Party candidate Katherine Deves, who had attracted controversy for anti-trans comments.[62] In September 2022, Linehan said that his anti-transgender activism had led him to question the safety of COVID-19 vaccinations and the scientific consensus on climate change "because I've been lied to so conclusively by all the people I used to trust".[63]

In interviews in 2022 and 2023, Linehan said the debate over transgender issues had "consumed his life": it had lost him work, made him financially destitute, and ended his marriage.[19][20][64] He said the Father Ted musical, on which he had been depending financially, was cancelled when the production company decided his involvement would make it impossible to stage.[20] He had previously called for all people working on the musical to sign a declaration agreeing with some of his views on trans people while describing clashes he was having with colleagues over their views on trans rights,[65] and read out a letter he had written to collaborators saying: "I don’t think you all have my back as collaborators or as business partners or as friends. Far from being on the wrong side of history, JK Rowling and I have been proved right over and over again that this is a poisonous ideology that is destroying lives."[66]

Linehan blamed cancel culture for his situation, and said: "Every comedian at the moment is living under a kind of state of permanent blackmail ... There's a few hot-button issues where you have to follow a certain line, and if you don't, you'll be destroyed."[67] In 2023, he denied disliking transgender people, but said using their preferred pronouns was "immoral". He said he did not have a problem with "men calling themselves women" and that "as we keep pointing out, we are only talking about places where conflict arises".[20]

Post-Twitter reinstatement

Linehan's Twitter account was restored in December 2022, following the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, who relaxed many of Twitter's content policies and announced an amnesty to restore suspended accounts.[68][69] He also attacked Ian "H" Watkins of Steps, tweeting: "What may connect him to a man serving 22 years for raping and torturing a 10-year-old girl?", on the basis that Watkins had used a tool to block transphobes.[68]

In April 2023, Linehan was again banned from Twitter, following his appearance at an anti-trans event called Let Women Speak in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He had tweeted the words "Durr imm gonna kill em" in response to a Twitter user who referenced counter-protestors at the Belfast event.[70][71] Linehan's account was reinstated days later.[72]

In July 2023, Linehan tweeted that David Tennant was an "abusive groomer" after Tennant wore a T-shirt saying "Leave Trans Kids Alone You Absolute Freaks".[73] In August, during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Linehan and other comedians performed a stand-up comedy show outside the Scottish Parliament after his original venues cancelled his booking over his views. Some supporters of Linehan attended the show and criticised the Edinburgh Fringe as oversensitive. Linehan also threatened to sue the first venue that cancelled his gig.[74] On 1 October, he attended the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, stating in a speech that he was "the most cancelled person in this room". On 3 October, he said he had been dropped by his television agent, Independent Talent, which also represented Tennant.[75] On 12 November 2023, he appeared on This Week on Ireland's national radio station, RTÉ, to talk about his claim of being cancelled, defend his anti-trans activism, and to promote his memoir Tough Crowd.[76]

Personal life

Linehan married English writer Helen Serafinowicz, the sister of the actor Peter Serafinowicz, in 2004.[20] They have two children[77][78][79] and lived in Norwich.[20] In October 2015, the couple worked with Amnesty International on a campaign film calling on the Irish government to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which "acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right". The couple revealed their decision for Helen to abort a foetus with acrania while living in England in 2004, and their discovery that undergoing the procedure in Ireland would have been an offence carrying a maximum 14-year prison sentence.[80]

Linehan's marriage to Serafinowicz ended in 2020 as a result of his anti-transgender activism, and he moved to London.[20] He said the relationship had suffered because of his legal and financial problems and visits from the police.[20][19][81] In 2023, Linehan said he had been on anti-anxiety medication for "five or six years" since having first received legal threats from trans rights activists.[20] He said he had contemplated suicide in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns, as he had lost work and relationships and was "completely alone".[82]

Linehan is an atheist.[83] In January 2009, he helped to publicise the Atheist Bus Campaign.[84] He is also an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.[85] In 2018, Linehan underwent successful surgery for testicular cancer.[20]

Linehan has been an active Twitter user, calling it "part of [his] nervous system" in a 2015 interview.[79] On 13 February 2009, Linehan hosted the first BadMovieClub on Twitter[86] which repeated the next day at midnight, hosted by Phill Jupitus. In August 2009, in response to criticism of the National Health Service by the US Republican Party, Linehan created the #welovetheNHS campaign on Twitter.[87][88] In 2011, he perpetrated a Twitter hoax that Osama bin Laden was a fan of The IT Crowd.[89]

Credits

Television writer

Linehan was also an executive producer of the first series of The IT Crowd, and an associate producer of one episode of Father Ted.

Television director

Film director

Film writer

Book writer

Awards and nominations

Year Nominated for Award Category Result
1996 Father Ted BAFTAs Best Comedy (Programme or Series) Won
1996 Father Ted Writers' Guild of Great Britain TV – Situation Comedy Won
1997 Father Ted BAFTAs Best Comedy (Programme or Series) Nominated
1997 Harry Enfield & Chums Writers' Guild of Great Britain TV – Light Entertainment Won
1999 Big Train BAFTAs Best Light Entertainment (Programme or Series) Nominated
1999 Father Ted BAFTAs Best Comedy (Programme or Series) Won
2001 Black Books BAFTAs Situation Comedy Award Won
2007 The IT Crowd BAFTAs Best Situation Comedy Nominated
2008 The IT Crowd BAFTAs Best Situation Comedy Nominated
2009 The IT Crowd BAFTAs Best Situation Comedy Won
2009 The IT Crowd IFTAs Best Script for Television Won
2014 The IT Crowd BAFTAs Television Craft Writer Comedy Won
2014 Count Arthur Strong BAFTAs Television Craft Writer Comedy Nominated

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