Graham Linehan

Linehan attended Plunkett's School in Whitehall, on Dublin's northside followed by Catholic University School, a Roman Catholic secondary school for boys also in Dublin, before joining Hot Press.[2] He also had a column with the magazine In Dublin before moving to London.

Linehan is married to writer Helen Serafinowicz, the sister of actor Peter Serafinowicz; the couple have two children.[3][4][5] In October 2015, Graham and Helen Linehan worked with Amnesty International on a campaign film calling on the Irish government to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which "acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right". The couple revealed their decision for Helen to abort a foetus with acrania while living in England in 2004, and their discovery that undergoing the procedure in Ireland would have been an offence carrying a maximum 14-year prison sentence.[6]

Linehan is an atheist[7] and in January 2009 helped to publicise the Atheist Bus Campaign.[8] He is also an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.[9]

Linehan announced in June 2018 that he is a survivor of testicular cancer.[10]

Linehan was an active Twitter user, calling it "part of his nervous system",[5] prior to his permanent suspension. In 2011, he perpetrated a Twitter hoax that Osama Bin Laden was a fan of The IT Crowd.[11] On 13 February 2009, Linehan hosted the first BadMovieClub[12] on Twitter. At 9pm exactly, over 2,000 Twitter users simultaneously pressed 'Play' on the film The Happening (dir. M. Night Shyamalan 2008) and continued to tweet whilst watching, a collective viewing experience that generated 40,000 tweets in under 2 hours. The BadMovieClub was repeated at 12 midnight on 14 February, hosted by Phill Jupitus. In August 2009, when the National Health Service was being attacked by the U.S. Republican Party during an attempt by President Barack Obama to reform the American healthcare system, Linehan created the #welovetheNHS campaign on Twitter in an attempt to fight back.[13][14] On 27 June 2020, Linehan's Twitter account was permanently suspended following what Twitter called "repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation".[15]

Linehan and Arthur Mathews first met while working at Hot Press.[16] In their early collaborations, they were responsible for segments in many sketch shows, including Alas Smith and Jones, Harry Enfield and Chums, The All New Alexei Sayle Show, The Day Today and the Ted and Ralph characters in The Fast Show (the characters were created by Linehan and Mathews and played by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson). The two men continued their collaboration with Paris[17] (one series, 1994) and Father Ted (three series, 1995–1998).[18][19][20] They then wrote the first series of the sketch show Big Train, but Linehan was not involved in the second series.[21]

They also wrote the "Dearth of A Salesman" episode for the series Coogan's Run, which featured the character Gareth Cheeseman. In late 2003, they were named one of the 50 funniest acts to work in television by The Observer.[22]

Graham Linehan with Jon Ronson at TAM London 2010

Linehan has since written for other shows, including Brass Eye. With Dylan Moran, he co-wrote the first series of Black Books, a series to which Mathews also contributed. Linehan has also contributed material to Blue Jam, and its television adaptation Jam.

Linehan wrote and directed the 2006 Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd, in which he sought to move away from the recent British trend towards mock-documentary comedies. Unlike many series of the time, it was recorded before a studio audience.[23][24] In November 2008, he was awarded an International Emmy for The IT Crowd.[25] In 2013, he wrote and directed The Walshes. He co-wrote the first series of the BBC sitcom Motherland and directed its pilot episode.[26] In 2018, he and Mathews announced plans for a Father Ted musical.[21]

Linehan has extensively commented on certain transgender issues. He became involved after the airing of a 2008 episode of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, drew criticism on Twitter for its storyline. The episode features a man who reacts with transphobia after realising that the woman he is dating is transgender.[29] Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response,[30] arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.[29]

Linehan has described himself as sceptical of the self-identification of gender, objecting to "privileged white people saying you must accept anyone who says they are a woman". He has said that "anyone suffering from gender dysphoria needs to be helped and supported", but has voiced concern over early transgender intervention for children.[29]

In October 2018, Stephanie Hayden, a transgender woman, sued Linehan for harassment. Hayden alleged that Linehan had shared photos on Twitter of Hayden's family and her life before transition, suggested she was a criminal, and repeatedly misgendered her and deadnamed her by using her previous name.[31][32] Linehan in turn alleged that Hayden publicised several private addresses linked to his family to silence him.[33] Police issued Linehan a verbal warning not to contact Hayden.[34]

Linehan has compared the medical transition of children to Nazi experiments on children, saying: "If you were around the time of something terrible happening like Nazism, would you be one of the people who said, 'This is wrong,' despite being opposed?" In the same interview, he described the trans movement as "provid[ing] cover" for "fetishists, con-men, and simply abusive misogynists".[35][36][37] In a statement to PinkNews about his comments, Linehan said, "when a magazine purportedly for gay people collaborates in homosexual erasure by indulging the straight fantasy that men can be lesbians, something has gone deeply wrong".[38] In 2018, Linehan praised anti-transgender protesters at that year's London Pride event as "heroes".[39][40][41]

In January 2019, Linehan expressed concern over the news that Mermaids, a charitable advocacy organisation for transgender children and teenagers, was to receive a £500,000 lottery grant to open clinics around the United Kingdom. He posted to blogging website Mumsnet encouraging its users to lobby the National Lottery Community Fund to reverse its decision.[42][43] The grant was reviewed[42] and went ahead. In response to Linehan, YouTuber Hbomberguy held a 57-hour fundraising livestream that raised £270,000 more for Mermaids.[44][45]

In 2019, Linehan was the favourite nominee by viewers to win The Last Leg's "Dick of the Year" award, following the comments he made on social media about transgender people.[46][30] When Linehan expressed interest in winning the award, presenter Adam Hills disqualified him from receiving it, stating that under the rules anyone who wants to be named "Dick of the Year" cannot be.[47]

In a February 2020 interview with the BBC television programme Newsnight, Linehan reiterated his view that the Tavistock Centre's practice of treating children with drugs such as puberty blockers is comparable to Nazi eugenics programmes and experiments on children, and said that transgender activists had made rape and death threats against feminists.[48] Following this interview, Eric Pickles, the UK special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, accused Linehan of trivialising the Holocaust.[49]

In June 2020, Linehan criticised comments made about J. K. Rowling after she made comments that were called transphobic. He linked to a blog post featuring screenshots of abuse Rowling had received, describing those who wrote them as "ignoring the abuse received by women who speak out against gender ideology" and "literally useless".[50] Hozier, named in Linehan's tweets, responded by saying Linehan was conducting an "obsessive little culture war".[51] On 27 June, Linehan's Twitter account was permanently suspended following what Twitter called "repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation".[15] In December 2020, Linehan evaded the suspension with an account posing as a trans man, which he used to call Colm O'Gorman "a traitor to women, gay people and yourself" for signing an open letter published by the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland;[52] the account was banned but Linehan claimed to have created another.[53]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Graham Linehan.

• Graham Linehan at IMDb
• Graham Linehan at the BFI's Screenonline
• Why, That's Delightful: Graham Linehan's blog
• Category Archives: Graham Linehan - Complete scans of Graham's articles written for Neon Magazine
• Writing for Performance: Graham Linehan interviews and writing advice
• Graham Linehan at British Comedy Guide