The Destruction of a Career

Comedy writer and humanitarian, Graham Linehan

Internet pile-ons. (an attack method to silence people with whom you disagree) and people trying to shut down your career and life have been one of the most insidious repercussions of assualts on individuals using the Internet to exchange ideas. The most malignant aspect are attacks on integrity and honesty of those who know the definition of a woman, in fact, even those who feel the rights of the minority trans community should also be upheld.

Witnessing some of the most violent confrontations would lead anybody to feel some trans people need help to equip them better for a life as a well-adjusted human being. Trans people would argue they have been marginalised and sunned since birth. The most malicous, those who hate people and feel they are perpetual victims, the most violently aggressive, need faced by a court and a jail sentence. But there are no laws to prosecute those who have destroyed careers.

The author of the wonderfully surreal television comedy Father Ted, is one such person whose life has been made an abject misery, almost destroyed by those quick to assimilate a false religion and condemn and persecute those who reject it.

In sorry, more than anger, he writes here, a casualty of cancel culture, in connection with the stage musical he helped devise now sitting with Hat Trick Productions, who presumably own the rights.

Here is Graham Linehan’s story of the music he wanted staged.

THE TRASHING OF A TALENT

by Graham Linehan

A few years ago I had an idea for a stage musical based on Father Ted, an idea I felt was equal to and respectful of the enduring affection many held for the residents of Craggy Island’s parochial house. The story touched on themes that seemed big enough for a West End stage. Jimmy Mulville of Hat Trick Productions

Hat Trick Productions was excited by my pitch and accompanied me to Dublin to convince my old writing partner Arthur Mathews to embark with us on the project. We then enlisted Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, who like Arthur, was one of my oldest friends and one whose development as a songwriter I had watched with delight over the previous three decades.

We began work on a script, encountering all the usual obstacles. Our first drafts were messy and overlong but soon we discovered the key to each character’s story and it came alive. Neil started delivering songs—each one better than the last. Through them, Ted revealed new, hilarious depths to his frustration and Mrs.Doyle had an absolute showstopper that I’m sure would have brought the audience to their feet.

All this to carry the audience merrily along to what I felt was the show’s greatest strength, its ending. It was an ending that wrapped up the characters’ stories once and for all, and perhaps shook off some of the gloom associated with the show since Dermot Morgan’s tragic death only days after our final wrap party in 1998.

While we were working on the show, trans activists were busy trying to destroy my life.

I had noticed some years before that troubled children were placing themselves on an irreversible medical pathway that was deeply damaging to their health and peace of mind. In this, they were encouraged by legacy LGB organizations that had catastrophically lost their way. When I began speaking up about it, trans activists reacted as they always do, by contacting possible employers, smearing my name in propaganda outlets like Pink News, which would later come after JK Rowling when she entered the fray. The police were sent to my door multiple times. I was sued by a succession of activists, one of whom was a child predator and vexatious litigant.

But I felt that my colleagues, who were so close to me during all this, who saw the effect that the abuse was having on my life and my ability to make a living, would stand by my side. That didn’t happen.

The last time I worked on the Father Ted musical. We presented the whole show to executive producer Sonia Friedman and her team. The story was almost there. The songs were exquisite. We’d even worked on a few rudimentary dance routines to give an idea of what audiences would see on stage. But then, I received a call to go to London and the Hat Trick offices. There I was told to remove my name from the show or it would not be made. Jimmy Mulville offered me £200,000 to do so. The money would have been incredibly useful as my other means of earning a living had largely disappeared.

But in the end, I refused for many reasons, not the least of which was that I did not want the legacy of Father Ted to be built on the ruined bodies of gay, autistic, abused and gender-nonconforming children.

Recently, my position in this debate has been vindicated by the findings of the Cass Report, which found that ‘trans healthcare’ in the UK has an inadequate evidence base, a toxic atmosphere within gender clinics that led to whistleblowers being vilified and smeared, and a rush to medicalize children without sufficient regard for the long-term consequences of such interventions.

Once at a meeting, Sonia Friedman, said to me “You’re on the wrong side of history.” I never received an apology from her. I would still appreciate one.

My beliefs—that biological sex is real and important, that women need single sex spaces for their safety and privacy, that their sports should be fair and finally that children should not be subjected to experimental medical protocols—are specifically protected in British law. Furthermore, polling shows that the same views are held by the majority of the British population. Mulville will not explain the problem he has with these views because he knows it will put him out of step with the majority of decent people in this country.

For too long now, Mulville has been sitting on a musical that would be a surefire hit. He is doing this for no other reason than to please the gender cultists on his staff and in the wider, captured media landscape. It’s pathetic, cruel and cowardly. If he doesn’t want to make the show, he should get out of the way and let me do it.

Please share this message with your networks. While it might not result in the return of my work, it will certainly make it more challenging for Mulville (and Friedman) to pretend they had nothing to do with a disgraceful act of preemptive cultural vandalism.

NOTES:

Shared with the hashtag #FreeFatherTed when you can.

This site is supervised 24/7. libel and slurs will not be approved for publication. Please rad the site rules on ‘About Grouse Beater’.

***********************************************************