Father Ted creator: Trans zealots are forcing me out of the stage version of my own show
THE Bafta-winning creator of Father Ted says fear of the trans lobby could force him out of a new stage musical of the hit TV show because of his outspoken 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.
Now producers at Hat Trick Productions have told him that plans for a stage musical of Father Ted could collapse unless he removes his name from the credits over fears that the show could become a target for trans 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.’
He is not the only writer to risk being written out of their own creations after falling foul of the transgender lobby. Last week Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was ‘erased’ from the trailer for Fantastic Beasts, a film based on one of her books.
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 had asked Mr Linehan to remain silent on the subject, but he had found it difficult.
‘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.’
Mr Linehan said that criticising transgender activists had also led to job offers being withdrawn.
Activists have branded Mr Linehan transphobic on social media. Pink News, an LGBTQ+ online magazine, has published more than 75 articles declaring him 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. The couple are getting divorced.
Mr Linehan has also been visited twice by the police after complaints from well-known 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.’
He described the scandals unfolding around the treatment of children with gender problems as ‘a global version of the Jimmy Savile scandal and Rotherham’.
The past decade has seen a rise of 2,634 per cent in referrals to Tavistock Clinic, the leading child and adolescent gender identity clinic.
‘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.
‘Producers are terrified activists will shut it down’
‘You have to believe the same things as them’
With the honourable exception of Jonathan Ross, not one of my former friends has stood by me.’
Father Ted was first broadcast in 1995 and ran for three series to great critical acclaim.
Planning for the musical started more than two years ago but has been delayed by Covid-19.
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.’