Father Ted creator and Bafta award winner says that fear of the trans community could lead to him being kicked out of a musical version of the popular TV series because of his controversial views.
Graham Linehan, whose writing credits also include The IT Crowd, has been attacked by trans activists for his defence of women’s rights and the importance of biological sex.
Hat Trick Productions now tells him that his stage musical Father Ted is at risk unless he drops his name from the credits. They are concerned that the show will become a target of transgender campaigners.
‘The production company are terrified that as soon as it opens, trans activists will try and shut it down,’ scriptwriter Mr Linehan told The Mail on Sunday.
‘Hat Trick have simply told me it will be impossible for them to be able to finance the show unless I am no longer associated with it. I’m considering leaving for the good of the show.
‘I am not concerned by trans activists but my producers are.’
The transgender lobby has not been the only one to put his writing at risk. Last week Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was ‘erased’ from the trailer for Fantastic Beasts, a film based on one of her books.
Graham Linehan (pictured), whose writing credits also include The IT Crowd, has been attacked by trans activists for his defence of women’s rights and the importance of biological sex
Mr Linehan believes biological sex is more important than the controversial idea that an individual can choose a ‘self-identified’ gender, which has seen biological men demand the right to use women’s lavatories and changing rooms.
Hat Trick asked Linehan to keep quiet on the topic, but Linehan found it hard.
‘The warnings from the production company became more insistent,’ explained Mr Linehan.
‘After a while, I had a very funny meeting with a top public relations guy at the company.
‘I’d hoped it might help improve my image. Instead he said: “Graham, I have to tell you, there are some people in the office who won’t work for you”.’
Mr Linehan added: ‘In almost every company I’ve worked with there are now young employees who are ferociously authoritarian.
‘They seem to think that unless you believe the same things as them then you have no right to take part in society.’
Linehan claimed that the criticisms of transgender advocates had led to job opportunities being pulled.
Social media activists label Mr Linehan as transphobic. Pink News is an LGBTQ+ online magazine that has published 75 articles declaring Linehan to be a bigot.
He reported that activists had also threatened his wife’s business and published her home address online, which put a strain on their relationship. They are divorcing.
Police also visited Mr Linehan twice after receiving complaints from transgender activists.
In an article for The Mail on Sunday last year, he wrote: ‘We are in a world where male sexual offenders in bad wigs assault female prisoners, where rape centres are defunded because they won’t admit men and where a bloke in a full beard tells schoolchildren that he’s a lesbian and we’re informed with venomous aggression that we may not talk about any of it.’
Pictured is the cast of Father Ted’s TV series
He described the scandals unfolding around the treatment of children with gender problems as ‘a global version of the Jimmy Savile scandal and Rotherham’.
In the last decade there has been a 2,634% increase in referrals from Tavistock Clinic. This is the world’s leading clinic for child and adolescent sexual identity.
‘I can’t understand why people aren’t more angry,’ he said.
‘Young girls all over the world are being drawn into something that will cause them irreversible damage.
‘When I started speaking out, I thought people would back me up. With the honourable exception of Jonathan Ross, not one of my former friends has stood by me.’
Father Ted first aired in 1995. It ran three seasons to high critical acclaim.
Covid-19 delayed planning of the musical’s production, which began more than 2 years ago.
Mr Linehan believes it would not have been made in today’s cancel culture.
‘If the trans orthodoxy continues, writers will not be free to produce work like Father Ted, or Monty Python, or anything else.’