'They took everything from me' - Father Ted creator breaks down on Northern Irish talkshow
The creator of Father Ted broke down on a late night Northern Irish talk show while discussing the impact his involvement in trans discourse has had on he and his family. Graham Linehan became emotional during a virtual interview with Stephen Nolan on Nolan Live today, stating, "They took everything from me. They took my family."
He said on the show: "Before this, all I was doing you know [was] writing comedy and playing board games and being silly on the internet, and then I just said 'Hang on a sec, stop calling these women terfs, stop sending them abuse, let them speak' and for that they just destroyed me."
The comedian and writer confirmed the breakup of his marriage following strain from financial insecurity due to loss of work.
When Mr Nolan prompted Mr Linehan about whether he truly felt destroyed, he responded with: "No, because the one thing about this that keeps me going is that I know I'm right. I know I'm right. When you open up a newspaper and see words, as I have many times, about sexual offenders who have suddenly decided they're women and the words 'her penis' comes up, well every time I see something like that I just think 'Well I'm right and everyone else is wrong'." He continued: "It's a very strange position for me to be in, it's the opposite position to one I've been in for my whole life. Sex is important, women are real, women's language is important, women need words like 'woman' to describe themselves, these are all just basic things."
GRAHAM LINEHAN: The world should remember Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint as arrogant, ungrateful cowards for turning on J.K. Rowling in trans row
Can we leave the dismissive racialised identity politics to the Americans? Linehan's problem doesn't have to do with being a white man, it's to do with his views on trans people. He also doesn't claim to have been silenced in the article, but does correctly point out that his career and homelife have been utterly fucked by the views he's expressed on Twitter.
That is a weird situation worth writing about, and he was a well-known comedy writer before all of this happened.
>>41082 >That is a weird situation worth writing about
It's not that weird; he's clearly lost his mind and is suffering the consequences. You might as well say it's a weird situation that Kim Kardashian dumped Kanye West.
>>41082 >That is a weird situation worth writing about
I'm not sure "I did a thing and now face the consequences of that thing I did" qualifies as a "weird situation worth writing about".
>>41084 >It's not that weird; he's clearly lost his mind and is suffering the consequences.
What about the article he wrote days ago in >>41072 strikes you as indicative that he's lost his mind? Are you capable of listening to anything anyone says, or do you just make snap judgements about their character and go from there?
>What about the article he wrote days ago in >>41072 strikes you as indicative that he's lost his mind?
He chose to lose everything, by spending most of his waking hours loudly espousing views that most of the people in his life considered utterly unacceptable. He refused to moderate his views or how he expressed his views, and in fact did the opposite - he went from saying "I'm not sure that social attitudes towards evangelist christian korean youtuberism are particularly healthy or helpful" to " evangelist christian korean youtubers and their cheerleaders are all evil carpet-baggers" within a few years.
Either he is fighting for a cause that is genuinely worth ruining his life over, or he has become trapped in a self-destructive obsession. There really isn't a reasonable explanation for his behaviour that lands anywhere in the middle. Given the weight of evidence suggesting that gender-affirmative care leads to better outcomes for trans people and the lack of evidence suggesting that trans rights have disproportionate externalities, I side very much with the latter explanation.
>>41081 Fine. If you two insist on bumping this thread I'll join in. You filth, you scum, I-hate-you-I-hate-you...
Anyway, I don't understand this idea that because you worked with someone (over a decade ago at this point), you can't publically disagree with them ever. Yeah, all these actors hit the big time specically because of that work, but so what? What's this lord and peasant mindset all about? What opinions would J K Rowling have to express before Harry Potter and pals were allowed to stand in opposition to them? Iraq War 3? XL Bully's on hospital wards? Submarines for paedos?
I genuinely think Linehan's treatment for bollock cancer did something to his noggin. Either psychologically or physiologically he's changed quite profoundly. He's gone from being a happily married, comedy writing, remainer, to a sobbing divorcee-crusader against "gender ideology", concerned with the "debanking" of Nigel Farrage, a man he wouldn't pissed on if he was on fire a few years ago.
>>41094 >Yeah, all these actors hit the big time specically because of that work, but so what?
At a guess, he's sublimating his own feelings about everyone who distanced themselves from him onto JKR. If the children whose labour she profited from are bad, think how much more bad the adults who he worked with must be.
That's not exactly what I was getting at, since he doesn't detail how many hours he spends per day on Twitter in the article, but he does describe having to speak to the police to defend himself based on his Twitter use, and then that incident being spun by a newspaper into an article about a "police caution". Wouldn't that experience make you emotional, or shape your views about the kind of society that you live in?
>He went from saying "I'm not sure that social attitudes towards evangelist christian korean youtuberism are particularly healthy or helpful" to "evangelist christian korean youtubers and their cheerleaders are all evil carpet-baggers" within a few years.
Not in that particular article, which seems quite measured. I haven't read all of his Twitter posts, but maybe Twitter doesn't bring out the best in people? What about the long history of hate figures that we have in British culture, and how we love to see (and spur on) a celebrity downfall? And none of this is relevant to the fact he's white and male, either, is it?
I don't accept your dichotomy of "either he's passionate or he's nuts", because he has been through a fucked up, weird experience -- I still firmly disagree with both of you lads. Consequences for your actions usually don't involve the full on blacklisting in your field.
I'm sure I've posted this elsewhere on .gs multiple times by now, but I am getting tired of debate by character assassination. Linehan is clearly still thoughtful enough to produce a reasonable article that rightly points out some pretty unhinged behaviour on the other side.
Linehan may well be a nasty piece of work, too, and I don't like the OP image that jokes about trans people being paedophiles (unsure if that comes from Linehan himself). I also don't like people who advocate for punching TERFs or anyone that justifies their nastiness by claiming membership of an oppressed class.
Basically, I am still stubbornly holding onto the idea that the purpose of public debate is to reach some sort of mutually shared truth and understanding of the world, rather than just to call eachother cunts and call them insane, or bigoted, or otherwise "other" if they disagree.
>>41096 >Basically, I am still stubbornly holding onto the idea that the purpose of public debate is to reach some sort of mutually shared truth and understanding of the world, rather than just to call eachother cunts and call them insane, or bigoted, or otherwise "other" if they disagree.
What mutually shared truth can be achieved in this debate? Fundamentally one side is arguing for their right to exist, and the other is arguing for removing the other side from existence.
None, but fortunately that's not even a remotely fair characterisation of what anyone says on either side. You can't possibly believe that Linehan wants some sort of transperson genocide?
>>410947
>concerned with the "debanking" of Nigel Farrage
It staggers me that people don't care about this. We have it literally on record that his political views were taken into account and we've known for a long-time that being unpersoned is something that happens that even Gordon Brown went into the 2010 election looking to address. No I don't care about whatever weaseling caveats you want to throw in, the arguable defence of the bank is the costs attached to banking with politically exposed persons i.e. we've let the free market dictate access to a fundamental service since 9/11 and just forgot about the impact.
It's the ultimate litmus test of whether someone actually cares or is just out to score points for their team. Do people have a right to a bank account? Yes, obviously, or you can't live in a modern society.
>>41099 You can't just label everything as a genocide, lad. This whole Linehan thing started by someone uncovering a joke on a comedy show from the 00s.
My own take is that he's ultimately been caught in a vicious cycle on social media that has destroyed his life. Pushing away many people who you'd probably label genocide-enablers just because of how unhinged and myopic it's made him. The obvious treatment is a frank 'who gives a shit?' for everyone involved which would end all the culture war bollocks about purple bicycles and the Islamic speed of light that sucks the oxygen out the room.
"Trans genocide" isn't genocide, nobody's dying. Being trans is not a different race or species. If we didn't let them transform from men to women, they would still be alive. They would still exist. It's not nice, it's mean and unpleasant, but it certainly isn't fucking genocide.
I support trans people, but fuck sake stop using such a completely dishonest, hyperbolic misrepresentation of an argument. This shit is why everyone thinks you're delusional hysterical dickheads. Because you kind of fucking are.
>>41099 Oh joy, the wave of misrepresentation and polarisation of political viewpoints that has drowned every other shit-hole on the internet has finally come to sink .gs.
Please: a. Get some professional help for your victim complex, or 2. fuck off.
>he does describe having to speak to the police to defend himself based on his Twitter use, and then that incident being spun by a newspaper into an article about a "police caution"
He doesn't say that in the linked article, but if he has said that, then it's bullshit. He was given a harassment warning by West Yorkshire Police in 2018 - that's not a statutory caution, but it's a formal legal declaration in which the police say "this person doesn't want any contact with you, so if you contact them again we're going to charge you". A harassment warning can be disclosed on a DBS check. I've only done a cursory search, but I didn't find any press articles referring to that as a "caution".
>he has been through a fucked up, weird experience
Crucially, of his own making. This isn't one of those incidents where someone is cancelled for a single off-colour joke or a thoughtless remark. He had literally years in which he could have come to his senses, backed away from the whole mess, decided that the game wasn't worth the candle and saved his marriage and his career. He didn't haplessly stumble into that fucked up, weird experience, he made a concerted effort over many years to dig himself deeper and deeper into it.
The ability to sometimes sound measured and reasonable doesn't mean that you haven't lost your mind. At his peak, Glinner was averaging more than 200 tweets per day, or about one every five minutes. He implied that Ian "H" Watkins was a paedophile on Twitter. He implied that David Tennant was a paedophile on Twitter. When he was inevitably banned from Twitter for a multitude of incidents like that, rather than going for a walk and having a think about whether this was all a sensible use of his time, he started his own social network. That does not strike me as the behaviour someone who is in full control of their faculties.
>I am getting tired of debate by character assassination
I don't think that Glinner's behaviour should necessarily be taken as a proxy for the broader debate on trans rights, but I do think we should stop paying attention to the kind of person who habitually characterises his opponents as paedophiles and Nazis. If we accept Glinner's basic argument - that this is a conflict between the rights of trans and cis women - then we should probably stop listening to a middle-aged bloke and start listening to the people who are actually affected by the issue.
>We have it literally on record that his political views were taken into account and we've known for a long-time that being unpersoned is something that happens
Coutts offered to transfer Farage's account to NatWest, their parent company. He did not want an account at NatWest. He was not debanked or unpersoned, he just believed that he had a right to bank with a prestigious private bank that only gives accounts to the very wealthy, rather than the kind of bank that plebs use. Coutts did compile a dossier on Farage's political activity, which they are legally required to do under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 (s.35).
>>41104 >I do think we should stop paying attention to the kind of person who habitually characterises his opponents as paedophiles and Nazis.
What about when that person is making more reasonable arguments? Do you think we should continue to ignore them on principle if they've ever shown other irrational behaviours?
>If we accept Glinner's basic argument - that this is a conflict between the rights of trans and cis women - then we should probably stop listening to a middle-aged bloke and start listening to the people who are actually affected by the issue.
I do recognise the need to hear the voices of those most affected and prioritise their accounts, but ultimately middle-aged blokes have mothers, can have daughters, or trans children, or realise that they are trans themselves, or might just care about others. I think there needs to be some measure of societal consensus about this, since sex very clearly runs through our biology and society. No (trans)man is an island, if you'll forgive the shit joke.
I am also a genuine believer in taking arguments on their merits. The person making them shouldn't matter, it's the search for truth that I'm most interested in. Linehan isn't wrong just by virtue of being Linehan. When someone is wrong, though, it's easy enough to point out in terms which don't relegate them to the other side. I don't even consider this idealistic, it's sort of necessary if we want to talk like grownups about anything.
Which he rejected as it was too late and he needed a business account.
>He was not debanked or unpersoned
>Coutts did compile a dossier on Farage's political activity, which they are legally required to do under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 (s.35).
The bank spent nine months collecting information on his specific case and and he had what has happened already to multiple people in the past. The work of the bank concluding that his views were "at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation".
>The dossier noted that “there is no evidence of regulator or legal censure of the client,” that he was unfailingly polite to staff and that he had recently been downgraded from a “higher risk politically exposed person [PEP]” to lower risk, and was on the way to being classed as no risk at all.
>Closing his accounts was not justifiable on a monetary basis because “the client’s economic contribution is now sufficient to retain on a commercial basis”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/18/coutts-records-undermine-claim-exiting-farage-not-political/
I certainly hope the bank doesn't close your account one day. It would be a shame if you couldn't keep paying your internet bill.
The problem with Farage being unbanked is that I think he should be run over by monster trucks so I literally don't give a shit about it. I believe I said words to this effect when it first happened, but my position hasn't changed. He's an enemy.
>>41101 >It staggers me that people don't care about this. We have it literally on record that his political views were taken into account
Coutts is a private business. They're allowed to decide who they want to have as a customer. If they don't want to be associated with you because you're a frothing reactionary grifter, you can't force them to keep you on.
>You can't just label everything as a genocide, lad.
What do you call that thing where you actively try to remove a group of people from existence? You know, like many trans-hating bigots are literally on record advocating for. In the face of people whose only demand is literally to be left the fuck alone.
>My own take is that he's ultimately been caught in a vicious cycle on social media that has destroyed his life.
That's a shit take that fundamentally denies his own agency in any of this. He hasn't "been caught in a vicious cycle". He's a public figure who has done and said hateful things. and his reaction to it is more or less the Skinner meme.
>>41107 >He was offered a customer bank account only AFTER he broke the news and found himself unable to get a bank account anywhere
We only ever had his word for any of that. He claims that he tried to get accounts with at least 9 other banks and was refused, which is funny because you have a right to a basic bank account, ironically enough as a result of EU law that landed shortly before we left. Even then, that was modelled after the pre-existing agreement that we had in the UK between government and a bunch of high street banks to provide basic bank accounts.
Even if we take him at his word, he could have approached any of the participating banks and got a basic bank account. If he did approach those banks and didn't come away with an account, it will have been because he declined the basic account because Don't You Know Who I Am. It's also worth noting that there are about a dozen private banks based in London, so it's possible that those are the ones he applied to and was rejected by. The business banking thing is slightly different, since some banks won't offer business services to people who aren't personal customers, and those that do typically require you have better than a basic account elsewhere.
>>41110 >Coutts is a private business. They're allowed to decide who they want to have as a customer.
Hello American tourist! In Britain a bank is absolutely providing a public function under the Human Rights Act and it's been shown following the news that both the government, the bank and in broader public opinion that a bank provides a public function.
This means it actually can't arbitrarily decide who they want to have as a customer. I hear they must even give bank accounts to women these days.
>[various noises I'm not doing a tedious point by point for]
Graham Linehan isn't advocating trans genocide - your point is irrelevant hysteria based on 'like many trans-hating bigots'. We're hypothesising on what caused this whole show to happen as you would when looking at anything else going on in other people.
It will be interesting to see just what even counts as trans genocide at this point. Does it work the same way as the 'straight genocide' movement you have in the US?
And I said cycle because he's peddling himself along, geddit? We like to have our fun here.
>>41111 Evidently things didn't work as you like then as even the debate in the HoL had multiple accounts of peers and their partners finding themselves without bank accounts or being unable to access monies. Now even the FCA is launching a review on how PEP reviews are conducted, despite this obviously only being part of the story as the bank in question did conclude in its own notes on its position as an 'inclusive organisation' being part of the judgement.
Perhaps it's possible that even venerable institutions like banks may fuck it up sometimes and even break the law.
>>41112 >Hello American tourist!
Swing and a miss, lad.
>In Britain a bank is absolutely providing a public function under the Human Rights Act
No, consumer rights do not fall under the Human Rights Act. The EU's right to basic banking is defined under ordinary EU law, same as flight compensation and fair trading. The rules lay out the scope of basic banking services, and the member state governments have to ensure they are provided. In the UK, that is fulfilled by the basic services agreement that the government already had with the retail banking sector for years before that, which was the model that the EU based this rule on. You can go to any bank participating in the agreement and get a basic bank account, no matter who you are. If Farage had approached any of these banks, he will have been offered one at the bare minimum. If he approached them and didn't come out with a basic bank account, it'll be because he said no.
>This means it actually can't arbitrarily decide who they want to have as a customer.
Nope. Not only can they refuse to serve you for any reason, or no reason at all, in some cases they may be obliged to refuse you. They are still private businesses, and have a right to decide who their customers are. If they're part of the basic banking scheme, they have no obligation to provide any service to you above and beyond what that scheme requires, and if they're not part of the scheme they have no obligation to provide any service to you whatsoever.
Now go be a reactionary tit somewhere else.
>We're hypothesising on what caused this whole show to happen as you would when looking at anything else going on in other people.
We know exactly what caused this whole show. He decided he doesn't like trans people (at least those that don't fit his idea of what a trans person should be) and was going to spend all his waking hours complaining about them; meanwhile other people he was associated with decided that that wasn't okay and that they no longer wanted to be associated with him. It turns out most people don't like it when you start acting like a massive bellend, which is probably why you don't have any friends either.
>>41114 >No, consumer rights do not fall under the Human Rights Act
They do. Specific circumstances, in the case of the bank in providing essential services, are an absolute cornerstone of how the disabled can access banking services for example despite them being private bodies. It's folly to have a one or the other approach to European institutions and especially when it comes to fundamental rights.
>You can go to any bank participating in the agreement and get a basic bank account, no matter who you are. If Farage had approached any of these banks, he will have been offered one at the bare minimum. If he approached them and didn't come out with a basic bank account, it'll be because he said no.
>Now go be a reactionary tit somewhere else.
Bootlicking. And for a fucking bank that caters to the elite no less that has already apologised and said itself that it was wrong.
Now how about you stop screeching for five minutes and sit down and think about what we're talking about with Linehan and why having a bank, on it's own meeting notes, debank someone for arbitrary reasons (not PEP) and what a dangerous abuse of power that is.
Heh. It's one of my favourite features of identity politics rad-libs when they go "but but PrIvAte BuSiNeSsEs!1" and start defending mega-corps for trampling on the principles of basic human rights.
Not only is it massively cognitive dissonance but completely hypocritical. You're standing up for a bank because they booted Evil Brexit Man, but you weren't standing up for that bakery who refused to do the gay couple wedding cake, were you?
>>41130 >Specific circumstances, in the case of the bank in providing essential services, are an absolute cornerstone of how the disabled can access banking services for example despite them being private bodies.
No, they're private bodies and they're not carrying out state functions or exercising state power, therefore the Human Rights Act might as well be in a different postcode. People not wanting to associate with you because you chose to be a grifting cunt does not constitute a rights violation. (See also: Russell Brand)
>Now how about you stop screeching for five minutes and sit down and think about what we're talking about
"What we're talking about" is how people who decided to be cunts discovered the hard way that nobody likes a cunt. That's why you don't have any real friends.
>>41143 >The event Linehan was speaking at on Sunday was hosted by the Institute of Economic Affairs and the TaxPayers’ Alliance
I want to pilot an Atlas mech right through Tufton Street.
>>41145 I imagine it's a long way from the privileged position you're implying and there's very little stopping you from organising a panel there. That's certainly the impression mainstream journalists are trying to give by calling it a fringe event.
Not covered in that story is the fact that initially he was denied entry to the conference entirely, allegedly based on police advice, until the party chairman intervened.
I should really try going on the pull at a Tory event. I feel like I'd be well above average, purely because I don't look like I'm just about to have a heart attack.
Do you reckon Tory birds like a bit of rough, working class northern cock?
I'm sure they'd love a good firm seeing to from a bloke who doesn't even have a degree, to them you're a savage brute, almost more like an animal, and they can't help gushing over it. But in a longer term romance, you've got no hope, unless she really, really wants to get back at daddy.
Sigh. Is a rich posho mummy dom who'll look after me really asking all that much in 2023?
>>41150 I bet if you tighten one door hinge for some of them they'd immediately see you as some kind of sexual Tyrannosaur. You will have to reconcile being a "savage brute" and wanting "mummy to look after you", because those sound like two diametrically opposed desires.
But hey, why can't men marry into money? I bet if we try really hard we could. There's no way Sunak et al eats pussy, half of them probably can't even have sex without crying because of public school trauma.
These theories are accurate, you just need to find a tory bird who hates her parents enough to want to use her trust fund to buy you a brand new transit van.
Yeah, but any Tory bird who hates their parents that much won't be at the party conference - they'll have changed their name to Sunbeam and they'll be finding themselves in Goa or some shit.
>>41146 >Not covered in that story is the fact that initially he was denied entry to the conference entirely, allegedly based on police advice, until the party chairman intervened.
Getting into a conference that the police said you weren't getting into sounds like not a very long way from a very privileged position.
>>41147 She's on stage but doesn't have a mic. She also looks like she doesn't actually know the words to Angels. It's the English equivalent of John Redwood 30 years ago.
