FR TED GRAHAM: MY CAREER CUT SHORT
Writer cancelled over trans row
FATHER Ted creator Graham Linehan has revealed he was denied the chance to work with comedy legends Steve Martin and Martin Short due to his gender-critical views.
The Irish comedy writer, 55, who also created the IT Crowd, has faced huge criticism from transactivists for his rebuttal of puberty blockers.
Linehan claims he was offered the chance to work with the duo, who star alongside Selena Gomez in the critically-acclaimed Only Murders In The Building.
In a column for the Daily Mail, Linehan said he was the person who had “worked with comedians Steve Martin and Martin Short for the shortest period of time”.
He added: “Five minutes, I think it was. A producer invited me to develop a comedy-drama TV series in which both would star.
“I had a flat-out offer and then, within minutes, an email from the same producer rescinding it.”
Linehan, who survived cancer in 2018, said he had lost his career, family and friends after getting caught up in the trans debate.
He explained he first got involved after leading a campaign against anti-abortion laws. Linehan and his ex-wife Helen Serafinowicz had worked with Amnesty
International to overturn an effective legal ban on abortion in most cases.
But he was “enraged” when Amnesty described the victory as one for “pregnant people” while he was recovering from surgery.
Linehan added: “My wife wasn’t a ‘pregnant person’. She was a woman, and a mother. But these were only the first ripples of a tsunami of madness.
“Online, people had started to go dangerously insane. It was such a slow process that I didn’t notice it at first, but now, as I lay in hospital, I was collecting my thoughts on the subject.”
Linehan said he was denied the chance to write a companion piece to classic one-act comedy/farce Black Comedy and saw a tour of Australia cancelled.
And he said his “pension” was taken away when plans for a Father Ted musical were ditched.
He wrote that a producer told him he was “on the wrong side of history”.
Linehan added: “Personally, I don’t want to live in a world where little boys playing with dolls and little girls who don’t like wearing pink are subjected to lifelong medical intervention because lunatics think these kids are in the wrong body.
“If that’s the right side of history, then history can go f**k itself.”
I had a flat-out offer and then, within minutes, an email from the producer rescinding it