Graham Linehan interview

What brought you to Australia?

The Free Speech Union brought me to Australia on a book tour and to bring attention to the state of free speech regarding gender ideology which is where freedom of expression is most vulnerable. The first time I was cancelled was in Australia when I was delivering a comedy writing class for the Melbourne Comedy festival. At that time, I thought I would be allowed to explain my concerns about what was happening to many young children caught up in this medical scandal. But as I discovered over the next few years, people just want to silence your voice and shut down the conversation. So this trip to Australia is a way to close the circle and finally deliver comedy writing classes.

How have the classes been going? 

I’m enjoying them. Over the years I’ve picked up lots of things during my writing career and I’ve learnt from lots of different disciplines, for instance there was an advertising guy who developed a technique for producing ideas to look at everything through a comic lens. But it’s not what I thought I’d be doing now.

What’s been your experience as a comedy writer?

When I first got into comedy I was very successful. I’ve won awards and thought this is what I'll do for the rest of my life. I still want that to be true.  I’ve always found the writing part to be the most fun and the most exciting when you're doing it, when you're actually writing it. It's never as good when you’re making the show. Although you do get little rewards like when an actor delivers a line in a way you didn't expect. So it all balances out, but the thing you write, the thing that leaves your desk, that's the thing. That's, just great. It’ll never be as good as that. You know?

Have you been able to raise the issue of free speech in Australia?

Yeah, a little bit and I've noticed the same dynamics operating in Australia as New Zealand the UK, Ireland and Scotland.  Scotland has just introduced a new hate crime law and Ireland is looking to do the same.  Conversations and debate have been closed down by trans activists who are installed in many institutions including the mainstream media, health services and an entertainment industry and celebrity class that push the trans ideology narrative.

But I've also been welcomed by people here who understand that this is the most potent hijacking of human consciousness we've ever seen. Much of the world has been tricked into going along with the medicalisation of gay kids. It’s almost as if the homophobia that resides within everyone to a greater or a lesser extent even among some gay people has been amplified and used against gay people.  

What are your concerns about the increase we have seen in the medicalisation of young people and LGB youth over the last 15 years or so?

This is the most immediate emergency because you have a generation of gay kids who will be harmed. We have a situation where much of society is lying to kids and saying if you undertake surgery or take cross-sex hormones, you will be happy. Many young people are being lied to and that’s going to be a huge shock in our society.  

The problem is on both the Left and the Right and while conservatives drift into religious terminology the Left presents this as progress.

What kept you going when it the height of being publicly shamed - how did you get through that?

It was hard and I suffered a lot of anxiety. But I had the support of various people like Stella O'Malley who would often speak to me when I was at my lowest. My kids never believed the narrative that was being spun about me. Oh, and lots of computer games. I was never the most social of people so I don't need much to keep going.

What did you do to maintain that sense of who you were?

I think just the journalism, you know, I was like if I can't be funny in a fictional way, I'll make people laugh in my writing. In journalism, I never accepted any of the rules or thought anything was taboo.  the perfect example of was when someone tweeted that he was a trans superhero, but if he’d been around during the war, that Nazis would have hunted him down. And I wrote ‘Oh, yes, the Nazis were famously bigoted against straight white men with blond hair.

And I do feel quite honoured to be in in the company that I am keeping now. Because the people I’ve made friends with who are in this fight are people who would never discard a friend for tribal reasons. You don't want to be friends with people I mentioned in the book who when the Germans come in, they're shouting  ‘he's in the attic’, and that's who I was surrounded by.  

I’m glad I found that out now rather than later.

Do you think a lot of people in the arts really understand this issue or are they captured by the idea of a progressive movement?

I think Michael Shellenberger [who released the WPATH files] nailed it, if people accept that they were wrong on this issue, they're going to have to accept that the whole society has been lying, and that there's actually no one driving the bus. And that's a really frightening thing to realise.

What do you think is driving the gender ideology movement?

Men and also some women who gain increased status because of their support of this ideology that is framed as ‘progressive’ when it’s the most homophobic, misogynistic movements ever.  One of the things to notice about gender ideology is how it changes language all the time which means no-one can do their job - comedians aren't allowed to be funny, journalists aren't allowed to report the truth and when men enter women's sports it's no longer women's sport. And this has real life consequences. For example, I met a woman whose daughter was a silver medallist in judo who had to give up because she said, “What's the point in training? What's the point in training when someone is going to beat you because they're physically so much stronger”? If we don’t protect women’s sport it'll just be men, men, men all the way down.

Trans activism has silenced some of the best left-wing thinkers, figures like Helen Steele who’s a giant and represented herself when she took McDonald's to court and many other women. It’s been so depressing seeing the Left attack some of the bravest and best among them.

At LBG Alliance Australia we have the challenge of having to fight in seven different states, each with their own legislative bills introduced at different times.  It’s like a game of whack a mole.  Last year, the Victorian Human Rights Commission refused lesbians the right to hold women-only events and introduced a suppression law under which someone can be jailed for 10 years for suppressing the gender identity of a young person if they can prove ‘harm’.  Meanwhile the Australian Human Rights commission acted for Roxy Tickle in the Tickle v Giggle Federal court case with Sall Grover’s who’s seeking to protect the rights to women-only spaces.  

Yes Australia has a different set of challenges that the UK and the complexity of state laws and state medical institutions does make it more complex.

I’m a big supporter of Sall Grover. We met up in Sydney after the final day of her court case. She’s been fighting this for two years now and that’s what they do – try to silence any dissent and put huge pressure on women to retain their rights.  Sall Grover is another woman standing tall for all of us.  

We’re waiting for the judge’s decision and if she loses this round she will appeal to the High Court where it can be challenged in terms of the constitution. 

How have you been supporting yourself since you’ve been cancelled?

I am now writing on Substack as my only form of income really it helps me get across to people but I'm still quite niche.  And I'm currently writing a comedy to get a new form of income.

So What does the future look like for you?

I'm hoping that my activism is successful, and I don't need to do it anymore, because I don't want to do this for my whole life. I don't want to be butting heads against an invisible enemy. I want to write jokes and be a normal human being. So we should all be aiming towards the day when we don't have to do this anymore.

And I want to find an approach to this subject of gender identity without haranguing people or lecturing.  I think that's my problem with a lot of woke anti-woke comedy - it's fighting on ground the activists created and I'm not interested in that. I want to attack this ideology in a more oblique way - the way the Crucible attacked McCarthyism. That's the gold standard of how to approach an event like this. I'd like to spend the rest of my life doing that. I've been through my own personal crucible and I'd like to use that to power something. Something that's significant, I might be able to do it with this new sitcom.

Can you say more about it?

All I can say at this point is that it mixes elements from my two biggest successes really, which is the IT crowd and Father TED.  I just keep rewriting the pilot until it's good enough. Then we'll scope out the other episodes and what the characters are like.

We will approach a few different companies so we'll see what happens.