Graham Linehan has said he was pleased to be arrested by armed police at Heathrow - because it proved to the world how “dangerous and ridiculous” trans activism had become.
The Father Ted and IT Crowd creator said his arrest over an alleged “trans hate” tweet finally exposed the scale of censorship and intimidation he’s faced for the past decade - and he revealed that comedian Jimmy Carr was one of the only people who stood by him throughout the ordeal.
“I would have got arrested sooner. That’s the only thing I’d change,” he told GB News.
“Because it broke it open. It proved I’m not making it up. I’m not exaggerating the problem.
Graham Linehan spoke to GB News about his ordeal at the hands of armed police
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“Being arrested was a good way of showing, no – these guys are out of control, and unfortunately the police are working for them.”
He said the ordeal - which saw him seized by armed officers and later cleared after seven weeks on bail - had shown how activists had “turned police into their own private force.”
“They just seem to be like wind-up toys that any dishonest or opportunist person can use,” he said.
“They know they made a terrible mistake in arresting me. The best result would be that next time they think: ‘Oh no, I’m not touching this.’ That would be real progress.”
Mr Linehan defended the combative tone of some of his online posts, saying he’d tried being polite - but activists refused to engage.
Despite his fierce criticism of trans activism, Mr Linehan insists he has no issue with transgender people themselves
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“At the start of all this I signed a letter to Stonewall with a group of others asking them to calm the debate,” he said.
“We wanted a reasonable conversation. Their answer was ‘no debate’. That’s why things got heated.
“Whatever people think about my tone, it’s nothing compared to what trans activists do to their victims. We tried the polite way first, but you can’t debate people who refuse to argue back.”
He said his anger came from years of being targeted.
“When people call me aggressive, they forget I’m reacting to police knocking on my door, to being smeared, to my career being destroyed. They tried to erase me for saying men aren’t women. It’s hard to stay calm in that situation.”
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PICTURED: Graham Linehan with supporters outside Westminster Magistrates' Court
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Despite his fierce criticism of trans activism, Mr Linehan insists he has no issue with transgender people themselves.
“I’ve got trans friends. I’ve no problem with people living however they want,” he said. “If someone wants to present or live as the opposite sex, that’s their right. I don’t care about that. Live your life.
“But this isn’t about individuals - it’s about an ideology that’s captured institutions, medicine and the police.”
He called it “a dangerous, deluded belief system”. “It’s faith-based,” he said. “You’re asked to accept contradictions as truth, to deny what you can see with your own eyes. It’s become a kind of new religion.”
Mr Linehan says that while politicians and commentators rallied to his defence after his arrest, the comedy world he once thrived in abandoned him - except for Jimmy Carr.
Mr Linehan said he was 'delighted' when Jimmy Carr branded the Father Ted creator's airport arrest 'f***ing madness'
| GETTY“Jimmy Carr said something nice about me a few days ago, called me brave, and I was delighted to hear it,” he said.
“Now that he’s said it in public I can say this - Jimmy was the only one who ever offered to meet me, to offer support. He was a gentleman. It’s braver than most. Most wouldn’t even meet me.”
The stand-up, he said, had to be careful because “if they wanted to cancel him, they could do it overnight.”
“But there are others,” Mr Linehan added. “Comedians who’ve built their whole careers on being anti-establishment and they were quiet as the grave. Just one or two of them speaking up might have changed everything for me. I think it’s pathetic.”
He accused supposedly fearless comics of being “terrified” to tell the truth.
“Every comedian is now living under blackmail,” he said. “They know that if they make a single joke about this issue their lives will be destroyed. So they don’t talk about the modern world. This last 10 years will be defined by the trans movement. We’ll look back on it as a mass delusion.”
The comedic visionary says the cost of refusing to stay quiet has been total - his career, his finances, and his marriage.
“Absolutely everything,” he said. “Even my wife couldn’t stop me standing up for her rights and my daughter’s rights. After a while I just thought, well, this is too important not to talk about, so let’s separate and see how we get on. But the separation was permanent. The police turning up at our door was a big moment for her.”
He said his Father Ted musical was cancelled, his reputation shredded and his income wiped out.
“I’ve lost millions because of this,” he said. “I’ve paid taxes to a country that used them to fund malicious complaints against me.”
He now believes Britain has become “no longer a healthy society for artists” because comedians are being told not just what they can joke about but what reality they’re allowed to acknowledge.“They are literally asking us to lie about certain people 24/7,” he said. “To make our brains adjust so that when we see a bloke with a beard who identifies as a woman we have to call him ‘she’, even when he leaves the room. No. That’s the worst kind of mind control. It’s an autocratic nightmare. It’s dystopian.”Once one of Britain’s most celebrated comedy writers, Mr Linehan has now left for the US, where he says he can finally work, write and breathe.“I’m so disgusted with the UK I’d never really want to go back,” he said. “As soon as I stepped out of line with middle-class consensus, all these people I thought were friends just disappeared. I don’t really want anything to do with them again. I’d rather live here in America and build things.”Despite the anger - and the court fights still to come - He says he’s calmer now than he has been in years.“If you’ve got a friend going through something on their own, back them up,” he said. “Because if one or two people had done that for me, everything could have been different. But no one did.”