by Fraser Myers, spiked
Five armed officers swooped on the Father Ted creator for three gender-critical tweets.
Graham Linehan had only just stepped back on to UK soil when he was apprehended by five armed police officers. The comedy writer – known for Father Ted, The IT Crowd and his unflinching gender-critical activism – says he was arrested, locked in a cell and interrogated by police yesterday, immediately after landing at London Heathrow.
His crime, he says, was to have spoken his mind – one of the most serious offences you can commit in the eyes of the British state. During his interrogation, he claims he was asked to explain three supposedly offensive tweets, posted back in April, mocking trans activists and their attempts to invade women’s spaces.
In one tweet, he joked: ‘If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.’ In another, he described an image of a trans-activist march as a ‘photo you can smell’. In a follow-up tweet, he said: ‘I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. Fuck em.’
Read also: The shameful arrest of Graham Linehan. Free speech in Britain is on life support by Andrew Doyle, UnHerd