TRIGGERnometry - Backstabbed By The Entire Comedy Industry - Graham Linehan

00:00:00.840 Did you not have a self-preservation instinct, which is, I am destroying my career here.

00:00:05.880 Again, I just thought, who would disagree with this?

00:00:08.640 The Father Ted musical has been cancelled because of them.

00:00:12.820 This would have sold out immediately.

00:00:15.660 Whoever puts this out is basically printing money.

00:00:17.840 The other day I had to hide my car in case it's repossessed.

00:00:21.800 That's how bad my money situation is at the moment.

00:00:26.960 Again, what have I said that is so terrible to deserve that kind of treatment?

00:00:32.240 As someone puts it, the patriarchy in stilettos.

00:00:36.340 Graham Linhan.

00:00:37.380 Hello.

00:00:37.720 What a journey it's been for you.

00:00:39.340 I mean, you're back on the show, of course, but first time in the flesh.

00:00:42.700 It's been years of what must feel like an arduous battle for you, expressing your concerns about trans ideology, losing a hell of a lot of opportunities.

00:00:53.860 Some would say your career to a large extent.

00:00:56.300 And here you are, probably feeling, certainly in terms of what you were saying, quite vindicated.

00:01:01.500 Yeah, well, you kind of have to tell me.

00:01:04.200 I always think every shocking news story I hear about rapists in women's prisons or men in women's sports, I always used to think, oh, this is the one.

00:01:15.020 This is the one that will show people that it's like when Martina Navratilova broke cover and started talking about fairness in sports.

00:01:26.640 I thought, oh, it's over.

00:01:27.980 It's over. 0.97

00:01:28.500 She's like a lesbian icon. 1.00

00:01:30.040 So, and of course, they just monstered her exactly the same way that they monstered everybody who goes into this debate.

00:01:40.940 So, yeah, you'd really have to tell me whether it's turning around or not.

00:01:45.100 But if it is, I'm very happy to hear it, you know.

00:01:47.960 You don't think it's turning around?

00:01:50.720 I'm not sure.

00:01:51.460 Because I'm in such a weird position, I'm right at the centre of it.

00:01:54.840 I didn't mean to be.

00:01:55.800 But the more I insisted, hey, this is something that we should all be talking about.

00:02:01.680 It's not, it's the things they're telling us are taboos, are not really taboos.

00:02:09.660 The more I said that, the more I kind of increased my notoriety.

00:02:15.160 As I say in the book, like Pink News have written 75 hit pieces about me.

00:02:19.900 And so there was a kind of a, there's been a swirl of misinformation around me.

00:02:26.660 Also, that extends to my Wikipedia page, which we can't change, you know.

00:02:31.620 Everything is written so that it's the worst, most negative view of me.

00:02:39.280 And, yeah, I've just been in this strange position, very isolated.

00:02:44.580 I wrote the book.

00:02:46.740 What's it called? Tell everybody.

00:02:47.900 Sorry, I've written the book.

00:02:48.880 You've written the book, right?

00:02:50.160 Yes, I've written a book.

00:02:51.260 The book is called Tough Crowd.

00:02:53.060 And it's a memoir.

00:02:54.720 The trans stuff is only the last, you know, third of the book.

00:02:59.280 But, like, I've been basically writing that book while completely isolated.

00:03:05.080 Having lost all my contacts, really, from my previous life.

00:03:09.400 During COVID as well.

00:03:11.160 So it was like two years of being cancelled during COVID as a very strange experience.

00:03:17.760 It's even more isolating.

00:03:19.480 And, yeah, all I've been doing is I've been saying exactly the same thing that I've been saying for the last five years.

00:03:28.160 But I had to write a book before people started actually listening to the content of what I was saying.

00:03:34.460 One of the things I found genuinely really striking and unpleasant about the way that people were treating you is there were some people who I would have thought owed some loyalty.

00:03:48.540 And this is what happened with J.K. Rowling as well, where the actors who got massive breaks from acting in Harry Potter then essentially stabbed her in the back or suddenly turned their backs on her.

00:03:59.020 Likewise with you, there are people who got big breaks with roles in things that you'd written.

00:04:04.260 People like Graham Norton, for example, coming out and saying there's no such thing as cancel culture, having watched you be cancelled for, like, several years in a row.

00:04:12.540 There's only accountability culture.

00:04:14.480 I mean, that's got to be gutting.

00:04:16.780 Yeah, and it keeps happening.

00:04:18.160 And not only that, but people go out of their way to attack me.

00:04:22.660 Bill Bailey said it was, who I cast in Black Books, said that my activism was baffling, you know, as if it was like just a kind of, you know, a thing I was doing for recreation.

00:04:39.880 You know, the issues here are extremely high stakes, you know, the health of children, the safeguarding of women, fairness in women's sports.

00:04:52.560 These are all extreme.

00:04:53.660 So the idea that it's baffling.

00:04:55.780 And then Graham Norton, as you say, says there's no such thing as cancel culture.

00:04:59.820 He must know that I've had my life destroyed by trans rights activists. 1.00

00:05:04.560 He must know that the Father Ted musical has been cancelled because of them.

00:05:11.480 And yet he, you know, he makes this statement about accountability.

00:05:18.000 But again, what am I being held accountable for?

00:05:21.640 You know, everyone agrees with me.

00:05:24.880 You know what I mean?

00:05:25.880 It's just that for some weird reason, this ideology has kind of taken over in certain areas, publishing, the theatre, journalism.

00:05:41.320 For some reason, it's these middle class pursuits is the wrong word, but it's these middle class industries that have been, you know, captured.

00:05:54.300 And everyone outside of these industries, no one believes it.

00:06:00.640 No, everyone believes that women should have fair sports, that men shouldn't be able to go into women's toilets or changing areas or rape crisis centres, whatever it happens to be, simply because they identify as a woman. 0.83

00:06:13.720 No one believes this outside of these industries.

00:06:16.180 And also, you cannot speak to anyone about it.

00:06:20.800 If you talk to people about it, they do the equivalent of putting their hands over their ears.

00:06:25.760 And I think it's because, I think it's because, because it's a middle class phenomenon.

00:06:30.400 You know, everybody in the middle class knows somebody whose child identifies as non-binary or, you know, or has some sort of similar identification thing going on.

00:06:44.160 And these kids are kind of feeding their parents a line of nonsense, you know, that the parents, you know, who love their kids are just swallowing whole.

00:06:54.820 So, Graham, when I was growing up, I used to watch Father Ted, loved it.

00:07:00.160 One of my all-time favourite sitcoms, brilliant.

00:07:03.440 So many of your shows I watched and I loved.

00:07:07.600 How did you get involved in going from that to this?

00:07:13.080 Well, I kind of always had my ear to the ground in terms of things that were coming down the pipe.

00:07:20.720 When I was, when I was just starting out in comedy, I went to see a comedy masterclass by Danny Simon, who was Neil Simon's brother.

00:07:31.000 And I remember at the time someone said a funny thing.

00:07:34.020 They said, because he was listed on the ad as being one of the greatest comedy writers in the world.

00:07:39.160 And a friend said he's not even the greatest in his own family.

00:07:42.220 But this was kind of unfair because he actually did know his onions.

00:07:46.680 He worked on the Mary Tyler Moore show.

00:07:48.220 He worked on Bilko, which is one of my favourites.

00:07:52.320 Much better known over here than it is in the US, even though it's an American sitcom.

00:07:56.240 So I wanted to hear what he had to say.

00:07:57.780 And one of the things he said was anyone who's writing sitcoms should be aware of changing social trends.

00:08:06.180 Because a very good place to set a sitcom is at the edge of something like that, something new coming along.

00:08:14.240 And his example was the Mary Tyler Moore show, because there were a greater number of women entering the workplace suddenly because of the pill.

00:08:21.700 And so they wrote this show about a woman, career woman who comes and works on a news programme, you know, except he used the word women's livers, which was really funny.

00:08:32.180 But, but, but I always felt that that was really good advice.

00:08:37.260 So I always kept my antennae up for things that were changing.

00:08:40.620 And it also kind of naturally aligned with my, I'm just a very curious person.

00:08:47.880 I like, I like new music.

00:08:49.960 I like new books.

00:08:50.980 I don't read the classics as much as I read stuff that's supposed to be very good now.

00:08:55.380 Um, and yeah, there were a couple of things like the only reason I'm, I'm, I'm a poker player is because I was just an early adopter of the kind of, um, the poker boom that happened when, uh, Chris Moneymaker won the world series.

00:09:12.240 Um, because he, he entered into a competition for 10 quid or something or free.

00:09:17.560 It was a free ticket, span it up into a series of tournament entries, kept winning, and then won the world series.

00:09:23.880 So it just completely, uh, created a poker boom.

00:09:27.180 And I remember getting into poker thinking, oh, it's very special, very special.

00:09:31.420 Really?

00:09:31.740 No one else is doing this.

00:09:32.860 Everyone else was doing it.

00:09:34.320 It was just because I was kind of always on the lookout for new things I could get involved with.

00:09:39.380 Um, and in the same way, I kind of, uh, realized that the, there was a big thing happening with the internet, uh, which was that some people knew exactly what it was and exactly what was going on.

00:09:54.760 And other people hadn't a clue, like they didn't know the words for things.

00:09:59.120 They didn't know that, you know, I don't know.

00:10:02.200 I'm trying to think what's a good example.

00:10:03.840 Uh, well, you know, you like, oh God, this is one from the book, but, but like, um, you.

00:10:09.380 You could say to someone, oh, what browser are you using?

00:10:12.020 And someone won't have a clue what you're talking about.

00:10:14.740 Yeah.

00:10:15.280 So I realized that was a good, uh, someone who knows a lot about computers and who doesn't know a lot about computers is a good conversation that will, uh, mark that new social change.

00:10:28.620 You know?

00:10:29.480 So the IT crowd kind of got born out of that.

00:10:33.580 So then I was still paying attention.

00:10:35.520 I was still trying to see what was coming down the pipe.

00:10:37.360 And, uh, it was actually an episode of the IT crowd I wrote, uh, that had a trans character in it.

00:10:43.880 And I noticed that the, the pushback was extraordinarily vicious, uh, much more so than any other joke I'd written that had got, got a kind of any kind of pushback.

00:10:54.680 In fact, I'd never really got any pushback for a joke before.

00:10:57.040 This was the first time which marked it out as, oh, this is interesting.

00:11:00.640 And bear in mind, you were joking about Catholic priests in Ireland in the 90s.

00:11:04.920 Yes.

00:11:05.480 Yeah, exactly.

00:11:06.580 But then again, it would, I don't want to give myself too much credit there.

00:11:09.600 It was kind of safe.

00:11:10.800 Catholic priests don't try and destroy your career, you know.

00:11:13.640 But like, um, but, uh, I noticed that happening first of all, and then, uh, Gamergate came along.

00:11:24.280 And on Gamergate, I was sure I had completely, um, uh, I completely absorbed what the issue was, what was going on.

00:11:33.980 And I dismissed it as to everyone who would listen to me, and I had a lot of followers, as a misogynistic hate campaign, which on some levels it was.

00:11:42.780 There were people kind of, um, tagging along with it for that reason.

00:11:47.620 But there were also a lot of guys who thought that they were fighting, uh, uh, uh, corruption in gaming journalism, you know.

00:11:55.500 And I just kind of became a node, one more node of people who were saying, it's just a misogynistic hate campaign.

00:12:03.380 That's all it is.

00:12:04.820 Like a thought-terminating cliche, just to shut it down, rather than looking at all the complexities to see what was going on.

00:12:11.120 See if there were any valid, uh, arguments from the other side.

00:12:14.060 None of that.

00:12:14.940 No strong manning a case.

00:12:17.160 Just, I just had my weapon, which was, it's just a misogynistic hate campaign.

00:12:21.860 So anyway, Gamergate passed.

00:12:25.300 And then I started noticing that suddenly the, during Gamergate, one of the, one of the most, um, 0.78

00:12:32.040 famous things that happened was a thing called Operation Lollipop, where all these trolls set up fake accounts of black women 0.78

00:12:39.240 and, uh, pretended that they found, uh, Father's Day offensive. 0.95

00:12:45.580 Right?

00:12:46.580 And they set up a hashtag called something like End Father's Day.

00:12:50.160 Yeah.

00:12:50.360 Right?

00:12:51.000 It was designed just to create as much havoc as they possibly could.

00:12:55.620 I remember at the time, you know, the people who I was, uh, allying myself with on the left, very much on the left.

00:13:02.620 I was always a very good little lefty.

00:13:04.260 Um, but these people were, you know, very critical of this, um, of this, uh, this piece of trolling.

00:13:14.220 Men dressing as, uh, men pretending to be women online to create havoc was considered by the left a bad thing when the right did it.

00:13:23.940 And then the left started doing it.

00:13:25.660 The same, I just saw the same types of anime, uh, avatars popping up that were on the other side during, during Gamergate.

00:13:34.500 And I realized that, you know, basically there's always a huge contingent of men on the internet who really don't like women.

00:13:43.580 They despise women. 0.98

00:13:45.260 And they will do anything they can to undermine them and troll them and get their own back for all sorts of real and imagined slights in their, in their past. 0.96

00:13:53.380 You know, and they just switched horses.

00:13:56.400 Yeah.

00:13:56.600 I'm not saying they're exactly the same people.

00:13:58.500 It was definitely a crossover, you know, and they just started abusing women online, targeting their work, doing all the Gamergate tactics, you know, which included swatting.

00:14:09.560 You know what swatting is?

00:14:11.480 Swatting is when, uh, do you, well, do you want to, I, well, I, I, it's very simple.

00:14:15.900 So in, in a, for example, if, um, people are watching somebody who plays computer games on Twitch, they will find out what their address is and then they will report a very serious crime as allegedly happening at that location.

00:14:29.360 Okay, got you.

00:14:29.860 So that they can, so that they can watch on camera as a swat team descends on this person that they're watching.

00:14:36.080 Okay.

00:14:36.340 Like, like the camera is just an added bonus in that, in that particular case.

00:14:40.220 It was done to a lot of women during Gamergate, apparently, you know, and apparently one of the things that swat teams do when they go into a situation is they immediately kill the pet. 0.94

00:14:49.340 They kill the family pet.

00:14:50.420 So even if the, even if it doesn't result in the death of their targets, they've still caused a lot of distress and all this sort of stuff.

00:14:59.780 Anyway, again, this was a tactic, terrible, worst thing in the world, uh, when it happens on the, um, on the right.

00:15:06.840 But when it happened, when the left were doing it, as happened to Tim, uh, what's his name?

00:15:11.860 Paul.

00:15:12.160 Tim Poole.

00:15:12.780 Tim Poole lately.

00:15:14.320 There's not a, there's not a word about it, you know?

00:15:17.020 So I saw these kind of internet war tactics being used against the latest target, which was left-wing women who were being called TERFs, who were, uh, being subjected to work tribunals.

00:15:34.600 Um, uh, they were, they were being reported to the police, uh, all sorts of things were going on.

00:15:41.780 Um, and I just thought, I had what I thought was a natural thought, which was, this is not right.

00:15:49.280 This is a bad thing.

00:15:51.280 We should all be trying to stop this.

00:15:53.840 But again, because these new, these, this new target where we're left-wing women, well, actually, no, I'm kind of confusing the issue. 0.82

00:16:05.020 Because what's very interesting about this, sorry, excuse me, let me rewind a little bit.

00:16:09.680 This new target with the, the, the women who are being, the women in Gamergate who are being targeted were gamers, right?

00:16:16.180 And gaming journalists and, and, and whatever.

00:16:18.700 Yeah.

00:16:19.040 Um, the women who are being targeted this time were left-wing, uh, were left-wing women who are, who are really the backbone of a lot of left-wing activism in the, in the UK.

00:16:29.140 You know, like, uh, two of the people who were targeted were Helen Steele, who is the woman who single-handedly sued McDonald's, you know, whatever you think of the, the action.

00:16:41.220 It was an incredible feat for her to do it.

00:16:43.720 And she was hugely respected, uh, among the left for it.

00:16:47.540 And Linda Bellos, who came up with, I think, Black History Month in the, in, in the UK.

00:16:52.320 You know, these are two significant figures in left-wing activism.

00:16:56.740 They're being called bigots. 0.90

00:16:59.380 Linda Bellos is black. 0.99

00:17:01.060 And they're being called bigots. 0.86

00:17:02.400 And it's like, again, well, this isn't right.

00:17:05.800 Why is this, why is this happening?

00:17:07.640 I should, I should say something, you know.

00:17:10.960 But, again, all these tactics, men pretending to be women online, targeting jobs, targeting livelihoods.

00:17:18.680 And when Gamergate was doing it, when, when, when the right were doing it, it was the worst thing in the world.

00:17:24.940 And it was a sign that Trump and everything is going to be, create a hell on earth for, uh, LGBT people and all the rest of it.

00:17:32.180 And feminists and women's. 0.98

00:17:33.620 And women's. 0.74

00:17:34.400 Women's.

00:17:34.820 Women's.

00:17:35.320 Women's.

00:17:35.820 Women's.

00:17:36.820 Yeah.

00:17:37.820 But then when the left started doing it, exact same tactics, men pretending to be women online, targeting livelihoods, targeting, uh, uh, you know, one of the things that happened to me when I came out was people would literally just kind of contact all my friends and say,

00:17:55.680 can I just ask why you're still following Graham Linnard, you know?

00:17:59.500 And it was just like a kind of a, everything was done except talk about the issue.

00:18:04.940 The issue itself, you couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't bring it, you couldn't talk, talk about it because, yeah, sorry.

00:18:12.020 I was going to say, and when was the moment you came out?

00:18:15.080 When was the moment you stepped forward and went, enough's enough, I'm going to make my voice private.

00:18:19.080 Just to be clear, he's not gay.

00:18:20.440 He just said what he thinks.

00:18:22.580 Yeah, of course, because you can't be gay because gay means there's a binary.

00:18:25.680 So we can't have it. 0.57

00:18:26.900 Well, apparently a lot of, I heard one guy tweeting recently that gay men are more frightened of saying they're GC than they are of coming out, than they were of coming out.

00:18:35.080 But, well, again, sorry, sorry to bring up another bit in the book, but I guess it is kind of, you know, central, but I was on morphine. 0.85

00:18:43.500 I just, I've had an operation to get a testicle removed, like Hitler. 0.98

00:18:49.240 And, and I was on morphine and there was a wound on my side that was covered by a bandage.

00:18:57.520 Yeah.

00:18:58.480 And I thought, oh, it doesn't feel too bad at all.

00:19:01.120 I hopped, hopped to my feet, chucked on my jeans and just got ready to go. 0.99

00:19:05.360 And the nurse came in and was like, what the fuck, what are you doing? 0.98

00:19:07.920 And I was like, oh, sorry. 0.99

00:19:08.720 I thought it was just a, you know, it was supposed to be a day release thing.

00:19:12.240 You're supposed to have the operation and walk out later.

00:19:14.000 So anyway, I got back onto the trolley.

00:19:19.120 The morphine started, you know, was still kicking in.

00:19:22.220 I didn't realize it had, oh, that's why I wasn't feeling any pain.

00:19:26.220 And I just had my phone.

00:19:27.780 I disastrously had my phone.

00:19:29.760 And I'd been, I'd been studying it for a few weeks of months, even.

00:19:33.900 I'd been going, what is this?

00:19:35.340 Am I getting anything wrong?

00:19:36.900 Is there something I'm missing?

00:19:38.480 And it was, and, and I just couldn't, I couldn't locate it.

00:19:41.660 You know, they, people would say things like, oh, trans people have always been around.

00:19:46.000 We're just, they're just braver now.

00:19:48.000 That's the, that's the reason we're now noticing them.

00:19:50.680 It's like, what?

00:19:52.360 So, and it was, but it's like, the reason I know that's bollocks is because Shakespeare didn't notice them.

00:19:58.120 And he noticed everything else about humanity.

00:20:00.440 So how did he miss an entire cohort of people who have always existed?

00:20:05.480 You know?

00:20:06.260 And, but you got involved in this essentially when you're on Morphe.

00:20:10.140 Yeah.

00:20:10.340 Right.

00:20:10.980 And that's when you, and that's when you started tweeting.

00:20:13.260 That's when you started to get involved.

00:20:14.960 That's when you made your voice public.

00:20:17.340 But when you, when you obviously got off Morphine, which I assume you are, Graham.

00:20:22.060 It was about a year later.

00:20:23.400 Yeah.

00:20:24.360 I'm only joking.

00:20:25.560 But when, did you not have a self-preservation instinct, which is, I am destroying my career here.

00:20:32.160 This is a career that I've worked really hard on.

00:20:35.180 This is a career that is incredibly stellar.

00:20:37.240 I'm universally respected in my industry, which can I just say, in comedy, is practically impossible.

00:20:43.080 And then you hit this particular self-destruct button.

00:20:47.420 Well, that's the thing.

00:20:49.100 I didn't realize it was a self-destruct button.

00:20:51.560 Again, I just thought, who would disagree with this? 0.63

00:20:54.460 Women are being swatted.

00:20:55.840 Women are being, sorry, not swatted. 0.92

00:20:57.300 That was Gamergate.

00:20:58.280 Women are being, women are being targeted.

00:21:00.540 They're losing their livelihoods.

00:21:01.660 You know, one of the first stories I heard about in this fight was Vancouver Rape Relief, which had a dead rat nailed to the door because it won't accept men into the space because it's just for women only. 0.96

00:21:13.640 And it includes trans-identified men in that.

00:21:16.560 They nailed a dead rat to the door, you know.

00:21:18.600 And then, like, there's other stories that have happened since.

00:21:21.520 Amy Ham, who is a Canadian nurse who put up a poster saying, I love J.K. Rowling.

00:21:27.620 She's still in a work tribunal three years later, you know, fighting for her job. 0.99

00:21:32.860 And so I just thought, well, clearly we have to help these people.

00:21:39.880 And it never occurred to me that people would go, well, actually, no, we're not.

00:21:44.860 We're not helping.

00:21:46.300 Not only are we not helping these women, we're not helping you.

00:21:49.820 All these colleagues I'd worked with for years, you know.

00:21:53.440 And so I kind of made a bad bet when I was in my, you know, morphine state.

00:21:59.400 And I bet on, you know, loyalty.

00:22:04.500 And I bet that my friends, many of whom have daughters, would want to, you know, be in the same fight.

00:22:13.280 And you must have been shocked then when, you know, you get people who are friends, who are colleagues,

00:22:18.340 some of whom actually got their big breaks for working on things that you'd written.

00:22:24.540 People like Graham Norton coming out later saying, well, having watched you be cancelled over years,

00:22:29.400 than saying there's no such thing as cancelled culture, there's just accountability culture.

00:22:33.660 Yeah.

00:22:34.140 Because he could just say nothing.

00:22:36.100 Yeah.

00:22:36.560 He could just say nothing.

00:22:38.580 And that would still, you know, you can have your opinion about that.

00:22:41.240 But to pretend that what's happened hasn't happened and actively say something to the contrary,

00:22:47.920 that is quite something.

00:22:50.440 Yeah, but I've found that it is completely standard for this fight.

00:22:56.540 People will do anything to avoid having this conversation.

00:23:00.340 And Graham Norton has just kind of decided that I've just popped out of existence.

00:23:04.680 And the issue is such a non-issue that he won't even discuss it.

00:23:09.760 You never hear him saying why women shouldn't have fair sports or Vancouver Rape Relief should have a dead rat nailed to the door.

00:23:18.440 Because they know their positions are indefensible.

00:23:21.900 So what they do to save their own skin, which is what he's doing, is, you know, they genuflect every so often.

00:23:29.140 And one of the things you can genuflect, you know, one of the ways you can genuflect to the mob is by saying there's no such a thing as council culture.

00:23:37.060 Even when your immediate colleague has had his life destroyed by it.

00:23:42.620 We'll be back with Graham in a minute.

00:23:44.820 But first, do you remember the Canadian trucker protest in 2022, where thousands of Canadians came out to protest COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates?

00:23:53.500 Now, these protests lasted for weeks.

00:23:56.080 And the people out on the streets needed funds, as any grassroots protest would.

00:24:01.560 So people set up online crowdfunding campaigns, which raised millions of dollars.

00:24:06.580 Incredible.

00:24:07.740 But once the Canadian authorities had started to criticise the crowdfunding platforms, ramping up pressure to close the campaigns,

00:24:15.480 it didn't take long for the biggest crowdfunding platform, the one we've all heard of, to completely capitulate and shut the campaigns down.

00:24:23.480 Now, this is where our partners, Give, Send, Go, come in.

00:24:27.200 They stepped in when the other platforms backed off and raised millions of dollars for the truckers.

00:24:32.820 When they were criticised and dragged through the Canadian courts, Give, Send, Go said it respected diverse views and believed hope and freedom are values worth fighting for.

00:24:42.440 This is why we're proud to partner with Give, Send, Go.

00:24:45.200 So, if you need to crowdfund for whatever means the most to you, then don't go to the big tech platforms.

00:24:52.380 We recommend you do it on Give, Send, Go.

00:24:55.380 Starting a campaign on Give, Send, Go is easy and intuitive.

00:24:59.340 Go to givesendgo.com today.

00:25:02.140 That's givesendgo.com to start raising money for whatever is important to you.

00:25:06.940 And now, back to the interview.

00:25:08.820 And I wanted to come back to the question that Francis was exploring with you, which is, how can I put this?

00:25:17.760 None of us are sure of issues to care about.

00:25:20.360 I think that's fair to say.

00:25:21.800 There's modern slavery. 0.99

00:25:23.560 There is, I mean, there's wars every fucking country at the moment. 0.98

00:25:28.340 You know, like there's so many things that we could all care about. 0.96

00:25:30.700 But you really focused in on this issue as being very important.

00:25:35.160 Why is this such an important issue to you?

00:25:37.640 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.

00:25:44.380 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,

00:25:49.640 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:25:53.640 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:26:00.380 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, The Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:26:05.460 Get tickets at mirvish.com.

00:26:07.640 Well, again, first of all, I have a daughter, and I have a mum, and a, you know, and I had a wife, you know.

00:26:19.940 I thought their rights were important.

00:26:25.500 And again, I just find it, I think sometimes I find that conservative spaces still don't realise how key this is.

00:26:32.880 You know, this is like the door that unlocks everything else, critical race theory and everything else.

00:26:37.420 If you can, if half the population can dominate the other half and take big slices of the pie that over 100 years after the suffragettes we'd worked out how to create a little bit of, I know it's a dread word, but equity between men and women, right? 0.63

00:26:53.100 And suddenly there were a group of men who were suddenly grabbing pieces of this pie.

00:26:58.660 The best example is sports, you know.

00:27:01.060 They have a massive physical advantage.

00:27:02.860 It's not reduced by transitioning.

00:27:04.860 And many, many don't transition.

00:27:06.740 They just say they're transitioning.

00:27:08.580 And they get, you know, why wouldn't you do it?

00:27:10.500 You get, like, huge cash prizes, but again, it's like, it's so clearly wrong.

00:27:18.660 It's like, it's like you've kind of suddenly given some of the worst people in the world a licence to behave abominably, you know.

00:27:27.260 Like, is there anyone lower than someone who would, who would join a woman's sport just to beat it? 1.00

00:27:32.440 I don't think so, you know.

00:27:34.680 So, like.

00:27:35.760 Really, Graham? 1.00

00:27:37.060 Worse than a murderer, a pedophile, a rapist? 0.99

00:27:39.640 Sorry, yeah, you're right, you're right. 0.91

00:27:41.640 One of my other problems, I used to be a movie and film critic.

00:27:45.160 I'm sometimes given to hyperbole.

00:27:47.560 There's a rhetorical flourish.

00:27:49.420 There's a rhetorical flourish.

00:27:50.560 But, like, I do think that it's pretty low.

00:27:52.880 Okay, fair.

00:27:54.600 So, I just kind of thought, oh, well, everyone will see this.

00:27:57.540 Like, I remember once I got into an argument with John Ronson, the journalist.

00:28:01.280 Now, John Ronson, he's someone who should be all over this.

00:28:05.340 He wrote a book called So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

00:28:07.960 Great book.

00:28:08.640 Yes, justifiably a well-regarded book.

00:28:12.360 He told a story of Justine Sacco, I think her name was, who famously told a joke that was deliberately interpreted in the worst possible light while she was on a plane flight going from somewhere to somewhere.

00:28:28.800 She said, I'm going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS.

00:28:33.560 Actually, I won't because I'm white, lol. 0.97

00:28:35.320 Yeah, it's okay, I'm white.

00:28:36.700 And by the time she landed in Africa, like, her life had been absolutely destroyed.

00:28:40.440 And it was clearly an anti-racist joke.

00:28:43.440 It was about Western comfort.

00:28:47.960 And her life was destroyed.

00:28:50.120 And John wrote a very moving interview with her.

00:28:52.860 And I thought, well, John will be all over this because this is the industrialization of those kinds of shaming tactics.

00:29:02.540 Not a bit of it, you know.

00:29:04.200 I showed him a photograph of a huge hulking bloke playing in a girl's basketball team.

00:29:10.380 All the girls are, like, in their teens.

00:29:12.640 And he seemed more worried about the bloke's feelings than any of the girls.

00:29:16.860 And why do you think that is?

00:29:18.020 Why do you think that this industry has been captured to such an extent, particularly comedy, Graham?

00:29:24.300 Because if you think the greatest comedy, in my opinion, I'm sure it's probably yours as well, are the ones who point out the things that nobody is talking about.

00:29:34.980 Saying the emperor has no clothes, et cetera, et cetera.

00:29:37.140 A great hulking bloke playing basketball with a load of 14-year-olds.

00:29:41.980 I mean, that to me seems a pretty ripe, you know, pretty ripe territory for comedy.

00:29:47.280 Like, Eddie, I find it, what I find really funny, I remember once, what's his name?

00:29:52.260 Nish Kumar did a list of people who were joking about, I call them the Smiths. 0.68

00:30:01.700 What's his name?

00:30:03.700 I call, oh, his name, Smith.

00:30:06.080 Sam Smith.

00:30:06.660 Yeah.

00:30:07.140 I call him the Smiths because he's his they, them pronouns. 0.99

00:30:09.960 And, you know, I would make fun of this because I think it's absurd.

00:30:13.660 Yeah. 0.75

00:30:14.540 And he's an absurd figure.

00:30:16.080 Just the same way I made fun of, I remember Sting cutting an incredibly absurd figure when he was famous.

00:30:23.520 We used to watch him on TV and author would always say, watch him take off his shirt.

00:30:27.880 He will find a way, you know. 0.58

00:30:30.340 But now the idea that this ridiculous man, Sam Smith, who's demanding we all use counterintuitive pronouns for him, is somehow off limits.

00:30:40.680 Nish Kumar did a list, me and Andrew Doyle were in it.

00:30:43.200 And Nigel Farage, I think, was on it.

00:30:44.860 People who are making fun of Sam Smith, you know.

00:30:48.920 And it's like, what are you talking about?

00:30:53.540 These are the people we make fun of. 0.98

00:30:55.580 Like, Eddie Izzard is another ridiculous figure, you know. 1.00

00:30:58.800 It's like running for election in a pink beret, using women's toilets. 1.00

00:31:03.720 And just no one's allowed to say, this is a little bit wrong.

00:31:07.100 This is not right.

00:31:07.840 You shouldn't be doing it, you know.

00:31:09.500 And no one's able to be comic about it, you know.

00:31:14.580 So that was one of the things I tried to do when I was in this.

00:31:16.900 I tried to make people realize.

00:31:18.800 We have this YouTube channel called The Mess We're In, where I talk about these issues with a Canadian gay man named Ardy Morty and a Welsh feminist, Helen Staniland.

00:31:29.580 And they're really smart, and they're really funny, and we have a great laugh on it.

00:31:34.120 And that was important to me, to break the spell, you know. 0.73

00:31:38.040 It's like Nish Kumar saying we can't make fun of ridiculous people, you know. 0.91

00:31:43.380 And it's true. 0.94

00:31:45.060 It's like the whole thing is like a disease in comedy.

00:31:48.120 Like, when did Trevor Noah ever go viral?

00:31:51.800 I don't think ever.

00:31:53.500 When is Nish, what are Nish Kumar's five best jokes, you know.

00:31:57.820 And they're just, it's just, they've changed their role into kind of, I call them regime comedians.

00:32:05.340 They're just mouthpieces for what the mob is currently into, you know.

00:32:10.720 But Graham, I agree with all of what you said.

00:32:13.760 But why?

00:32:14.960 Why do you think, let's really try and explore the core of this.

00:32:18.520 Why is it that comedy, which is meant to be, all of these things we've spoken about, has been taken over by this ideology?

00:32:28.500 What is it about it?

00:32:29.540 Is it the people in the industry?

00:32:31.280 Is it the comedians themselves?

00:32:32.740 What's going on?

00:32:33.420 I think one of the things before you answer, Graham, we should say is, it's the British comedy scene.

00:32:38.320 This has not been the case in America in anything like the same way.

00:32:41.500 Yes.

00:32:41.800 In America, people have no problem making fun of this issue.

00:32:44.720 Really?

00:32:45.020 On TV, maybe a different issue, but you go in the comedy, I mean, you go to Rogan's Club, for example.

00:32:50.340 There's no shortage of people.

00:32:51.840 And this isn't just in the last year or so.

00:32:53.940 Like, there have been lots and lots of people who've been able to make jokes about all of these issues.

00:32:58.120 I think there's something uniquely special about the British industry.

00:33:02.480 Absolutely.

00:33:02.960 But it may not be the reason it was captured.

00:33:06.240 Well, I'm not sure.

00:33:06.900 Maybe you'll be able to tell me whether the makeup is different of, you know, American comedians.

00:33:12.880 But I think comedy is middle class in another middle class industry.

00:33:16.720 And basically, this is a mass delusion that has particularly affected the middle class.

00:33:23.980 You know, you don't often look at comedy as a way to, you know, break into millions or to have a career if you're working class.

00:33:32.020 I don't think it comes, the thought doesn't come as naturally.

00:33:35.780 But a bunch of middle class people sitting around, nothing else to worry about except taking the piss out of things with their friends. 0.97

00:33:42.440 Of course, comedy occurs to them, you know.

00:33:44.260 So they get into comedy and then suddenly, you know, you just got a kind of a middle class ring, I guess.

00:33:50.980 And that, unfortunately, it seems to have only happened recently that there is acceptable and unacceptable subjects, you know.

00:34:00.960 And even when you don't cover them, I was banned from the Edinburgh Festival.

00:34:06.140 My act, it's just silly jokes.

00:34:09.380 It's just like IT crowd jokes or Father Ted jokes.

00:34:13.040 I don't think there's anything about the trans issue.

00:34:16.380 Maybe one joke once.

00:34:17.760 But it's like, you know, it's suddenly there's certain people who, no, no, they're not allowed.

00:34:24.800 They're not allowed to be on a stage or in front of an audience or speak to people.

00:34:29.960 No, no, no, no, no.

00:34:31.260 You know, where did that come from?

00:34:34.240 I think that might be one of the reasons, actually, because the one thing that they do have in the U.S.

00:34:38.380 is different scenes in different places.

00:34:41.180 And so you might not be welcome on the, you know, Los Angeles scene if you make those jokes.

00:34:47.840 But you can go to Austin, you can go to New York, you can go to different parts of the country.

00:34:52.840 Whereas in the U.K., there's one scene.

00:34:54.880 Sure.

00:34:55.460 It's controlled by about three people.

00:34:57.200 Yeah.

00:34:57.400 And if those three people happen to think, you know, trans women are women or whatever, and you don't, that's sort of you.

00:35:03.680 Yeah.

00:35:04.380 Isn't it?

00:35:04.780 That seems to me a big part of it as well is like there's one narrative.

00:35:09.120 I mean, Andrew Doyle, who is a mutual friend of ours, of course, always makes this point about Nika Burns in 2018.

00:35:16.180 This is the woman who runs the Edinburgh Comedy Festival said, you know, I look forward to the woke future of comedy where comedians decide what isn't isn't acceptable.

00:35:26.620 And if that's one person and there's three others who happen to, you know, be TV commissioners and whatever, sort of between the four of them, they can basically set the agenda.

00:35:35.980 Yeah.

00:35:36.320 And then they don't even have to enforce it because everyone else is going to fall in line.

00:35:40.740 Yeah.

00:35:40.980 And also, you know, the thing that happened to me is was, you know, as a warning for the others, you know, it's like, it's like you're the head on a spike.

00:35:51.480 Yeah.

00:35:51.900 Yeah.

00:35:52.180 And so, you know, everybody is being frightened out of engaging in this conversation.

00:35:58.000 And one of the things that I've been desperately trying to get across to people for the last five or six years is if we all do it, they can't win.

00:36:07.280 You know, have you ever heard of this?

00:36:09.300 Oh, God, this may and this may end up on the cutting room floor.

00:36:12.740 Maybe just keep this for your Patreon people.

00:36:16.340 Have you ever heard of a game called Werewolf?

00:36:18.680 No.

00:36:18.980 Werewolf is a party game.

00:36:21.420 We used to play it with all my celebrity mates, you know, about 12 of us around the table.

00:36:25.380 You need a lot of people, you know.

00:36:27.560 Everyone gets a piece of paper.

00:36:29.080 It's either got a villager written on it, vast majority, but two have the word werewolf written on it.

00:36:35.320 It's divided into day and night phases.

00:36:37.880 Someone runs the game to make sure no one's cheating.

00:36:39.960 And they go, OK, it's nighttime.

00:36:41.420 Everyone close your eyes.

00:36:42.280 Everyone closes their eyes.

00:36:43.700 Then they go, werewolves, open your eyes.

00:36:45.560 The two werewolves open their eyes and they see the other one and they give a little thumbs up to show that they've clocked each other.

00:36:52.120 And then the woman says, werewolves, choose someone to kill during the night.

00:36:56.080 And the werewolves go, that, right?

00:36:59.360 They say, OK, everyone close your eyes.

00:37:00.740 It's morning time.

00:37:01.500 Open them again.

00:37:02.420 During the night, Francis was killed.

00:37:04.840 The game then becomes...

00:37:06.020 You always get rid of the badly written character first.

00:37:10.240 Mate, you'd be the first to go in any scenario.

00:37:12.940 That's just the fact, mate.

00:37:13.880 Yeah, exactly. 0.59

00:37:14.320 No, you'd be the black character first, then me.

00:37:17.080 Yeah.

00:37:17.820 So, like, there's a...

00:37:18.920 So, basically, there's then a conversation, and this is where it gets interesting.

00:37:23.200 During the day phase, between all the villagers and the two werewolves over who the werewolves are.

00:37:30.000 And the two werewolves are trying to draw attention to other people.

00:37:34.820 I heard a noise from over here.

00:37:36.620 And the other werewolf is like, yeah, I think I did too, and all that sort of thing.

00:37:40.520 Now, the game...

00:37:41.280 Then, at the end of the day, the villagers have to decide who they're going to kill.

00:37:45.600 And they say, well, we're going to kill Constantine.

00:37:48.540 And it's revealed by the person running the game, I'm afraid Constantine was a villager.

00:37:53.900 And the game continues.

00:37:55.720 OK? 0.99

00:37:56.960 The villagers win the game if they kill both werewolves. 0.99

00:37:59.560 The werewolves win the game if they kill all but two villagers.

00:38:03.860 The game was invented by a student of sociology in Russia who wanted to prove his thesis

00:38:10.040 that an uninformed majority will always lose a battle of information against an informed minority.

00:38:17.140 Wow.

00:38:17.620 Yeah.

00:38:18.400 And the werewolves usually win.

00:38:20.460 Even if you have 12 people around the table, the werewolves will usually... 0.61

00:38:23.880 I once won by turning in the other werewolf.

00:38:26.040 I mean, you are in show business, Graham.

00:38:28.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:38:28.560 Yeah.

00:38:29.560 Yeah.

00:38:30.120 Well, that's clever.

00:38:30.980 You turned another werewolf.

00:38:32.340 Yeah.

00:38:32.760 And we won.

00:38:33.700 Wow.

00:38:34.660 So that just shows when you have hidden information...

00:38:37.800 Yeah.

00:38:38.240 Yeah.

00:38:38.500 ...you can completely manipulate a large group of people.

00:38:42.460 That's happening in the NHS.

00:38:44.680 It's happening in publishing.

00:38:46.380 It's happening in every middle class industry because there's always one or two or three people who think they themselves are non-binary, have a kid who's told them they're non-binary, or whatever it happens to be.

00:38:59.700 And those people are controlling the conversation.

00:39:03.080 So when Rachel Rooney, who is a children's author, wrote a beautiful book called My Body Is Me, a little book for toddlers.

00:39:13.640 Like, you might call it an anti-dysphoria book, a book to make you comfortable in your own bones for little toddlers.

00:39:20.440 They destroyed her career.

00:39:22.680 They called her age.

00:39:25.840 They said she was engaging in conversion therapy.

00:39:29.640 They wrote to...

00:39:30.680 Now, the people who did this were in the Society of Authors, the authors' union, who were supposed to stand up for their members.

00:39:41.720 And they helped destroy her career.

00:39:44.300 Because there's a couple of werewolves going, hold on a second, this is a bit transphobic.

00:39:47.960 And then everyone else is too afraid to say, no, it's not, because then you become the werewolf suspect, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:39:54.500 Exactly.

00:39:55.360 Wow.

00:39:56.080 It's like...

00:39:57.040 We're not going to leave...

00:39:57.820 We're not going to put that for...

00:39:58.780 That will be in the interview.

00:40:00.220 Oh, good.

00:40:00.840 It's such a good way of looking at it.

00:40:03.740 And I've always thought...

00:40:05.220 Oh, by the way, just in case people are looking for it and think, there's no good...

00:40:07.900 It was actually originally called Mafia.

00:40:10.380 Yes.

00:40:11.220 Yeah, I've played that game.

00:40:12.500 And the werewolves do usually win.

00:40:14.300 Yeah.

00:40:16.480 It's such an interesting point, because I've always...

00:40:19.280 My sense of history, from what I've read and understood, is a small, highly motivated minority,

00:40:25.820 often willing to break the rules.

00:40:28.220 Because that usually means, in the historical context, use violence.

00:40:30.940 But this is a form of violence.

00:40:33.600 It's just not physical.

00:40:34.720 It's destruction in other ways, right?

00:40:37.560 A small, motivated minority, willing to play by a different set of rules, will often be able to cower the majority because of the collective action problem, which is what you were talking about.

00:40:49.100 And it's played out in various mass movements before, you know, from Christianity to communism to national socialism.

00:41:01.620 These say, Scientology is the best example, where even the people at the bottom level didn't know some of the actual teachings of Scientology.

00:41:10.100 They were kept in the dark until the very last moment.

00:41:13.580 The best, funniest example of that is when Paul, I think it was Paul Haggis, who wrote Crash, a not very good Oscar winner, reached the highest level once.

00:41:23.340 And he went in for a meeting and they said, well, this is what's going on.

00:41:28.160 A god called Xenu put planes inside volcanoes. 0.87

00:41:31.940 And he just suddenly realized, after years of working for the Scientologists, these people are insane. 0.92

00:41:38.060 Yeah.

00:41:38.160 You know, and I guess there's a similar thing going on here.

00:41:42.820 There's a kind of a, there's a kind of a deliberate, forgive me if I run off the question.

00:41:48.980 I hope, I hope I'm not.

00:41:50.240 You do whatever you want.

00:41:51.120 But there's a deliberate kind of obfuscation around key, key aspects of this issue.

00:41:57.300 Like, for instance, what does trans mean?

00:41:59.940 Does it mean transsexual?

00:42:02.640 Right?

00:42:03.220 That's the way I would interpret it, the way I used to.

00:42:06.700 Um, but now it appears to mean transsexual and Eddie Izzard.

00:42:13.000 And Eddie is a cross-dresser. 0.99

00:42:15.460 So...

00:42:15.900 Hold on, what is a transsexual? 1.00

00:42:17.780 A transsexual is someone who's had an operation to cut off their genitals, you know? 1.00

00:42:22.120 That's what, that's how I always, uh, thought of it, you know?

00:42:26.080 Like, I don't know, even that definition might be wobbly at the moment.

00:42:29.120 Well, even that's not satisfactory because it's like, they didn't like wake up one day and went,

00:42:34.120 oh, I feel gender dysphoria.

00:42:35.380 You know, there's a process that will take you up to that, right?

00:42:38.860 And one thing that's happened is, I think that there's, there's a definition of gender reassignment

00:42:45.080 in the Equalities Act that says something like, um, uh, they have had this, uh, procedure or are thinking of having it.

00:42:54.040 So that means everybody is thinking of it.

00:42:56.060 Anybody can be thinking of having it.

00:42:57.860 And it really, I realized that, like, quite early on that the, the, this was a, a, a self-selecting group of people who just said,

00:43:05.840 I'm trans.

00:43:06.860 And that could range from Eddie Izzard, right?

00:43:10.600 To someone who has debilitating gender dysphoria, has an obsessive, uh, uh, recurring, invasive thought that they need to get rid of this to make themselves, uh, okay.

00:43:24.140 And, um, and it's like, these two have nothing to do with each other.

00:43:30.500 They have nothing to do with each other.

00:43:32.380 So why are there, so, so it seemed to me that suddenly you've created this informed minority who can, like, there's a very famous, um, sorry, this is probably,

00:43:43.480 please do cut out any of this where I'm rambling, but as to the werewolf's point, there's a very famous, um, document called the Denton's document.

00:43:53.860 Have you heard of it?

00:43:54.640 No.

00:43:54.940 It was a law firm called Denton's who, who worked pro bono on advice to give trans rights activists.

00:44:03.540 And it was literally for this, for this reason on, on pushing through, uh, laws or, or bills or whatever that would not be popular with the public.

00:44:14.520 And there's a, a number of bits of advice given, including avoid the media.

00:44:20.580 Don't get drawn into debates, uh, target young politicians, you know?

00:44:26.420 And when you think about some of the people like Nadia Whittingham and, uh, and, uh, Mary Black, who are pushing this stuff, they're all, they're all really young.

00:44:35.400 Yeah.

00:44:35.800 You know?

00:44:36.620 Um, and very empathetic and not very bright.

00:44:39.480 This is the optimum combination.

00:44:41.280 Someone who really cares, but doesn't really understand the issues very well.

00:44:45.220 Exactly.

00:44:45.420 Exactly.

00:44:46.380 And, um, uh, and so the Denton's document laid all this out in very bald terms, you know?

00:44:52.660 And I, as I always say, this is the first civil rights movement that has been told to avoid the media.

00:44:59.460 And when you think of it, when have you seen figures who are supposedly on the other side of this issue, right?

00:45:06.780 Like Susie Green or, or the, the, um, Nancy Kelly late of Stonewall. 0.99

00:45:12.440 When have you seen them on panel, not panel shows, on news shows discussing this issue?

00:45:16.660 They don't do it because the, the, um, the desire is to create a completely suffocating, um, uh, the desire is to completely suffocate the conversation.

00:45:29.980 Yeah.

00:45:30.320 To give it no air whatsoever.

00:45:32.240 And Graham, on that point about werewolves, I think what has been very instructive to that issue is the revelation of how exactly did our civil service become convinced about all of this?

00:45:45.300 How exactly did the police become convinced of all of this?

00:45:48.860 How exactly did other government and sort of quango-like structures become convinced that this ideology is the right way to go? 0.99

00:45:56.780 And we now know, don't we?

00:45:58.140 Yeah.

00:45:58.580 Yeah.

00:45:59.000 All the tactics that were used in this, uh, in the Denton's document.

00:46:02.680 And you could download it, you can read it yourself, and there's some very good pieces about it online.

00:46:06.740 But specifically, I mean, mermaids, et cetera, being heavily involved in this organization and essentially teaching them these highly contested ideas, to put it very mildly.

00:46:15.840 Well, here's an interesting thing.

00:46:17.460 Uh, did you know that mermaids used to be a great organization? 0.97

00:46:20.420 I didn't know that, no.

00:46:21.440 Yeah.

00:46:21.940 Mermaids in the old days... 0.79

00:46:23.380 Well, like Stonewall. 0.90

00:46:24.600 Yeah, exactly.

00:46:25.620 And mermaids in the old days were specifically for children who had dysphoria, you know?

00:46:30.840 Then Susie Green came along.

00:46:32.940 Susie Green had a gay or at least gender non-conforming child who the husband...

00:46:39.780 Now, I'm not saying anything out of order here.

00:46:41.860 This was a TED Talk that was up for years until it was suddenly taken down without explanation.

00:46:46.740 And she said that her husband didn't like the son playing with girls' toys, you know?

00:46:53.180 And she's doing it like a TED Talk.

00:46:54.960 She's got the thing, she's doing all the hand, you know, the hand gestures you get in TED Talks, you know?

00:46:59.080 And then it was it, and all the little phrases, which would change my life forever.

00:47:04.580 You know, all this stuff, you know?

00:47:06.780 That's so good.

00:47:08.100 And she's doing it, right?

00:47:09.720 But there's this huge gap.

00:47:11.640 It's like her husband didn't like him playing with girls' toys. 1.00

00:47:15.440 Suddenly she goes to Thailand with the kid at 16 and gets his penis cut off, you know? 1.00

00:47:21.900 So she told him he was trans. 1.00

00:47:26.520 She put him on hormones, put him on puberty blockers and hormones. 0.99

00:47:30.840 In fact, there's a very famous excerpt of a documentary about her where she's laughing because her 16-year-old son's penis wasn't large enough to create the inverted vagina. 0.98

00:47:41.900 This is another reason why people don't like to talk about this issue, because it's horrible. 0.92

00:47:47.440 So this woman went into Mermaids, you know, she'd obviously spent too much time into the night on forums listening to other people who think they have trans kids and believing everything they say.

00:48:01.360 And she entered into Mermaids and she changed the culture at Mermaids. 0.99

00:48:06.200 Similarly, you know, I used to follow, there was a social worker, her name's Lisa Muggler. 0.97

00:48:13.240 She's amazing.

00:48:15.480 And she said, it only takes a few people to groom an organization.

00:48:22.580 So, again, and, you know, and they've even made it a kind of a official part of a business in the diversity and inclusion or EDI.

00:48:32.560 I'm not sure what it's called. 0.66

00:48:33.760 I prefer DIE. 0.85

00:48:35.560 Yeah. 1.00

00:48:35.940 D-I-E. 0.98

00:48:36.600 Yeah, yeah.

00:48:37.680 D-I-E departments and do you know what I mean?

00:48:40.360 Yeah.

00:48:40.480 Like one of the things that made me realize something was really badly wrong at Hattrick was when I handed in a sitcom called Cancelled.

00:48:49.140 And they gave back sensitivity notes. 0.60

00:48:52.940 And I thought the whole sitcom is about, you know, how this is ridiculous.

00:48:58.840 The sensitivity reader said, people might think you're making fun of diversity and inclusion measures.

00:49:07.720 You know?

00:49:08.700 And so we've touched on Hattrick, which are probably one of the biggest production companies, comedy production companies in the UK.

00:49:15.360 When did it start affecting your career?

00:49:17.440 When did you start noticing colleagues turning against you?

00:49:22.620 Well, it didn't really.

00:49:25.220 One of the things about cancellation, especially during COVID, was that it was it all just happened silently.

00:49:31.000 You know, you don't really.

00:49:32.320 Still, I don't know.

00:49:32.940 There may be some people who just think I'm great and think I'm completely on the right track, but I can't call them to be to face another disappointment.

00:49:40.520 You know, and people, you know, yeah, they just didn't announce, well, Graham Lennon's a non-person now.

00:49:49.860 It just it just kind of happens.

00:49:51.900 The thing I the thing I did.

00:49:53.740 But hold on.

00:49:54.200 They're sitting on your musical now, aren't they?

00:49:56.500 Yeah.

00:49:56.900 Hattrick.

00:49:57.700 So you clearly know that they're not they're not they have the rights to it.

00:50:02.360 They're not going to let you do it.

00:50:03.680 They have half the rights and the other half are owned by me, Arthur and Neil Hannan.

00:50:07.820 And they're sitting on it in what I think is an act of kind of preemptive cultural vandalism, simply because I've stood up for women's rights.

00:50:16.160 You know, and I've stood against the medicalization of children, which I would argue is everyone's should be everyone's priority.

00:50:23.740 You know what I mean?

00:50:24.640 So we have the musical.

00:50:26.380 We had it on its feet.

00:50:27.520 We put it on a few times.

00:50:29.160 There were even little dance routines, you know, to try and sell it to to people who might put money in all this sort of stuff.

00:50:37.520 And now they're just sitting on it.

00:50:38.800 It should be on.

00:50:39.600 It should be on.

00:50:40.080 It should have been on for the last two years.

00:50:42.000 You know, the other day, the other day I had to hide my car in case it's reaped.

00:50:46.160 That's how bad my money situation is at the moment.

00:50:52.760 You know, I should have a musical on.

00:50:54.880 It should be up and running for like three years. 0.98

00:50:57.880 But because of this ridiculous and, you know, homophobic, misogynistic movement, it was just stolen. 0.89

00:51:08.300 And all Hattrick and my colleagues would have to do would be to say, of course women should have fair sports. 1.00

00:51:15.080 Of course, children shouldn't be mutilated and sterilized.

00:51:18.980 Do you know what I mean?

00:51:20.140 These are not controversial positions to hold.

00:51:22.780 But for some reason, they refused to do it.

00:51:25.780 And the thing that's also heartbreaking, it says a lot about this case, is the musical is a musical of Father Ted.

00:51:35.960 Yeah.

00:51:36.380 One of the most beloved sitcoms of the last 30 odd years, which is still shown, which is still quoted, which the comedy, the character of Father Dougal is now a staple when people talk about comedy and modern comedy.

00:51:52.420 This would have sold out immediately.

00:51:55.640 Whoever puts this out is basically printing money.

00:51:57.880 Yeah.

00:51:58.680 But it's not being stopped because of the public.

00:52:01.400 It's being stopped because theaters are refusing to put it on.

00:52:05.220 And Hattrick and my colleagues are refusing to defend me and say, you know, this is ridiculous and make an issue out of it.

00:52:10.820 Even so, your colleagues, the people that you wrote this with.

00:52:13.840 Yeah.

00:52:14.600 Yeah.

00:52:14.920 Like, I spoke to some of them afterwards.

00:52:17.680 And again, I mean, it's so weird.

00:52:20.200 This is what I mean when I say when you're at the center of it, it's hard to know what's going on.

00:52:23.740 Because they didn't seem to understand the issues.

00:52:25.820 You bring them up and it's like it's the first time you've told them about it.

00:52:28.800 And over the years, they had seen what had been happening to me.

00:52:31.880 They'd seen me lose opportunities.

00:52:33.680 I've been telling them exactly what the problem was.

00:52:36.900 Been getting largely agreement, you know.

00:52:39.380 And suddenly it's seen, again, as a kind of a hobby I have, you know. 0.98

00:52:45.140 It's like, no, they're sterilizing a generation of gay kids. 0.97

00:52:49.560 They're telling gay kids that they're actually straight, but they were born in the wrong body. 1.00

00:52:54.760 And they need drugs and surgery to take care of that problem. 0.99

00:52:58.220 That's evil.

00:53:00.020 And I cannot get anyone to stand by my side and say, yeah, you're right.

00:53:04.940 That's evil, you know.

00:53:06.700 We'll be back with Graham in a minute.

00:53:08.620 But first, we wanted to tell you about Factor.

00:53:11.160 We've discovered a fantastic way to stay on track with your nutritional goals while saving time.

00:53:17.520 If you're in America and you're looking for dietitian approved, chef prepared, fresh,

00:53:23.100 never frozen meals to fuel you on jam packed days, then you need to take a look at Factor.

00:53:29.240 Factor is America's number one ready to eat meal delivery service.

00:53:33.180 And they'll help you eat well for breakfast, lunch and dinner with nutritious and flavorful

00:53:37.880 ready to eat meals delivered straight to your door.

00:53:40.640 Leave the calorie counting to their dietitians and leave the planning, prepping and cleanup

00:53:46.260 to their chefs.

00:53:47.440 While you're out there crushing it, Factor are making sure each meal has the nutrition

00:53:52.440 you need and the flavor you're looking for.

00:53:55.660 Choose from over 35 chef crafted meals every week that support a healthy lifestyle and meet

00:54:01.640 your meal preferences, whether it's vegan, veggie, protein plus or wholesome options.

00:54:06.080 There are also calorie conscious options that don't skimp on flavor.

00:54:10.000 Try delicious dietitian approved calorie smart meals that are under 550 calories per serving.

00:54:15.720 The food is fresh and the ingredient quality is on point.

00:54:19.840 For example, the meat is from grass fed or pasture raised animals and is free of antibiotics, hormones

00:54:26.840 and GMOs.

00:54:28.660 It's high quality stuff and you just have to run a Google search to see how well Factor

00:54:34.100 comes out in reviews.

00:54:35.780 To try Factor, head to factormeals.com slash trigger50 and use code trigger50 to get 50% off.

00:54:43.180 That's code trigger50 at factormeals.com to get 50% off.

00:54:49.580 Now back to the interview.

00:54:51.540 And the thing that shows in a way, because how weird this all is, is I remember when I

00:55:02.420 was growing up, corporations, whether it's TV or we all kind of accepted that they were

00:55:07.580 immoral.

00:55:08.280 The bottom line was the bottom line.

00:55:10.000 And as long as it was going to make money, then that's fine.

00:55:13.180 But they would rather not make money.

00:55:16.820 Yeah.

00:55:17.220 Lots of money, particularly during a pandemic and coming out of a pandemic where everybody's

00:55:22.000 short of money.

00:55:22.880 Yeah.

00:55:24.360 Because of this.

00:55:26.080 I wrote it literally thinking that it will be a bit like being in a lovely mass.

00:55:34.240 You know?

00:55:35.680 Yeah.

00:55:36.060 Like one of the things I, you know, like one of the things I feel, even though I'm an atheist,

00:55:40.240 I do feel a little bit of a loss of the fact that we don't have a weekly event where we all

00:55:46.680 go and shake hands with our neighbors, you know?

00:55:48.820 And I thought I kind of saw this as this great release from COVID.

00:55:54.560 I was desperate for it to happen as soon as COVID ended.

00:55:59.380 But, you know, two years of having my reputation destroyed, 75 hit pieces about me in Pink News,

00:56:06.340 my Wikipedia vandalized and kind of rewritten every time we try and make it, you know, pathway

00:56:12.660 neutral.

00:56:13.620 It just took its toll.

00:56:15.340 And by the time we were ready to go, by the time COVID was over, they just said it wasn't

00:56:21.080 going to happen because of, unless I, unless I wasn't involved with it, you know?

00:56:26.080 And the thing that really got me was I said to them, look, okay, I'll stay away, but I'd like

00:56:32.280 to come in every so often and see how it's doing, see if it's on the right track.

00:56:37.280 And Jimmy Mulville of Hattrick said, no, we want a clean break, you know?

00:56:42.320 Again, what have I said that is so terrible to deserve that kind of treatment, you know?

00:56:50.720 You know what?

00:56:51.540 It's so wrong when you talk about it.

00:56:53.980 It's just so, it's just wrong.

00:56:57.260 And I think what you are actually being punished for, my sense is, you're punished for being

00:57:03.220 first and you're punished for because you had a large voice.

00:57:07.880 Yeah, maybe.

00:57:08.640 That's what I think you're being punished for.

00:57:10.540 Yeah.

00:57:10.880 And you're in the wrong industry. 0.99

00:57:12.720 If you were like an oil well rig man or something, no one would give a shit. 0.97

00:57:17.380 Yeah, exactly. 0.97

00:57:18.700 I mean, like when I came over here, like I never got any anti-Irish racism.

00:57:24.860 I got one weird, weird, I think someone called me a paddy in a police station once.

00:57:28.520 I think that was it.

00:57:29.360 But then again, I was in a police station.

00:57:30.680 But like, the rest of the time I've had, you know, everyone's very respectful and everything's

00:57:39.080 been going great.

00:57:39.800 But like, I think what I did was in the end was I transgressed certain, a certain etiquette

00:57:51.240 in that like, you know, this is a middle class movement.

00:57:55.260 It's bored middle class kids who are often the victims of it.

00:57:57.940 And, you know, I was kind of breaking an unwritten rule for going against little Jimmy's idea

00:58:06.520 that he's actually a third sex that's never existed before, you know?

00:58:10.720 Do you think part of it as well is that you are a heretic in that you were firmly part of 0.98

00:58:17.440 the liberal establishment?

00:58:19.800 Yeah.

00:58:20.420 And then you did.

00:58:21.340 I was a node.

00:58:21.980 Yeah.

00:58:22.440 Yeah.

00:58:23.100 That's how I see it.

00:58:24.360 And we've all got to be so careful about becoming nodes, about just transferring information

00:58:29.220 that we, because one or two, like what was crazy about the trans women or women thing

00:58:35.060 is that all these people who I'd believed for years, including people in the Gamergate fight

00:58:39.920 who I'd been fighting for trying to, you know, defend them from trolling and all this

00:58:44.420 sort of stuff, they believed it. 0.99

00:58:45.800 And it was like, it just kind of made me realize, oh my God, what else is bullshit? 0.99

00:58:55.620 Do you know what I mean? 0.95

00:58:56.360 All these kind of things I'd taken for granted, all these reasons that I'd gone in with both

00:59:02.200 feet when I was fighting with someone online and, you know, like, which was never a problem

00:59:06.160 when I was, when I was doing it against the right, but again, do against the left, you're 0.89

00:59:10.500 dead.

00:59:10.680 And I was using exactly, I was, I was actually quite polite during the conversation because

00:59:16.420 I knew that any slip would be punished.

00:59:19.060 I knew the way they worked, you know, but it didn't matter.

00:59:21.520 They used to do things like they would, they took a screenshot of a joke I made to my wife 0.96

00:59:26.080 where I called her a bitch and use that as an example that I was a misogynist. 0.99

00:59:30.340 You know, they faked, uh, they, they fake Mumsnet comments where I admit to sending dick pics 1.00

00:59:37.040 to women on Mumsnet. 0.98

00:59:38.800 Um, you know, one, one guy, a doctor did a fake prescription for me like that.

00:59:46.060 I needed mental pills and put it on a real NHS prescription, you know?

00:59:51.180 So, you know, it was just like a, sorry, just remind me how we got into this because sometimes

00:59:58.500 these, these things, these things, there's so many stories to this, they pile up and

01:00:03.880 I lose my train of thought.

01:00:05.140 So we were talking about heretics.

01:00:07.500 Oh yeah, yeah.

01:00:08.020 So, uh, yeah, but like, it was kind of, um, I think one of the reasons why I was landed

01:00:14.520 on with, with hobnail boots, so to speak was because like JK Rowling, uh, I was very, very

01:00:21.780 left-wing.

01:00:22.540 I was extreme.

01:00:23.540 I, I ticked all the boxes, you know, Israel, tech, everything, you know?

01:00:28.640 Um, and then, you know, JK Rowling did the same thing and similar to me as well.

01:00:34.560 JK Rowling, JK Rowling, again, impeccable credentials as a lefty, you know?

01:00:39.040 Uh, but, but more than that as well, we had both created things that they liked.

01:00:43.680 Yeah.

01:00:44.660 And they knew that if our voice is carried, they'd be in trouble.

01:00:49.620 So that's why, you know, they do things like, you know, they take JK Rowling's name off school

01:00:55.200 buildings and stuff like this.

01:00:56.680 It's just, it's designed to make everyone think there's something wrong with this person.

01:01:01.140 There's something badly wrong.

01:01:02.700 Amy, as I say, Amy Hamm, three years in a work tribunal because she put up a poster saying, 1.00

01:01:07.200 I love JK Rowling.

01:01:08.100 So, so again, JK Rowling created Harry Potter, which kind of, you know, has had three generations

01:01:15.940 reading ever since, you know what I mean?

01:01:18.500 Like at a time when computer games should be completely obliterating that activity for young

01:01:23.060 people.

01:01:23.380 And she just saved, like, you know, saved publishing really.

01:01:28.520 Um, but all these kids who grew up with her at the same time were also being influenced

01:01:34.100 by lunatics on Tumblr and Reddit who believed a series of completely incoherent things that,

01:01:41.280 you know, actually kind of appropriately enough are a form of magic. 0.96

01:01:45.100 You know, you could change sex, you know, you can escape the, the, you can escape your 0.99

01:01:51.800 biology, you know, and these things are like, unlike the magic spells in Harry Potter, these

01:01:58.020 are really dangerous things to tell kids, you know?

01:02:01.840 So, uh, so yeah, we had to be destroyed and, and conclusively, you know?

01:02:07.560 It's a sad story, man.

01:02:09.000 It's a, and you know, I haven't really heard you tell it quite to that level before, and I'm

01:02:13.980 really sorry that this is the way it's been.

01:02:16.020 It must be very difficult.

01:02:17.580 It must be very difficult.

01:02:19.120 I will say though, from an outside perspective, probably hard for you to see it like this,

01:02:25.020 as you said at the beginning, I actually do think we're making progress on this issue.

01:02:29.960 And, uh, I think the more time goes by, the more vindicated you'll find yourself.

01:02:36.360 So hang in there, uh, because I do think there's a lot, there's many other things about which

01:02:42.180 I'm not optimistic at all, but on this one, I think, certainly in this country, we're

01:02:46.760 actually making progress.

01:02:47.840 And I think that's partly down to you.

01:02:49.100 I know that so many of our female fans in particular, uh, as we call them, the angry 1.00

01:02:54.640 lesbian brigade, um, my people, your people, they all look a bit like me.

01:03:01.680 Don't laugh at it that much.

01:03:04.040 I was going to say like both of you, but you know, but the women are annoyed as well. 1.00

01:03:08.700 Um, yeah, uh, but so many of them are really grateful, uh, you know, that there was a man

01:03:15.380 actually who, who was not some, you know, I mean, you are a right-wing evil bigot now,

01:03:21.360 but you weren't at the time, uh, who was prepared to actually say something.

01:03:25.740 So I know it's really tough right now.

01:03:28.980 Um, but you know, your book has done well.

01:03:31.240 It's getting great reviews from people who are being objective about it.

01:03:34.400 Uh, and I really think that this is, um, you'll look back on this moment actually with pride.

01:03:40.660 Yeah.

01:03:41.020 I really do.

01:03:42.100 Oh, I already do.

01:03:43.440 Good.

01:03:43.820 I already do.

01:03:44.500 Yeah.

01:03:44.960 Yeah.

01:03:45.260 I feel like I was kind of asked a question that people are asked every so often in history

01:03:50.300 and I kind of answered it correctly.

01:03:53.140 You know?

01:03:53.920 Absolutely.

01:03:54.460 And Graham, there's also something that I want to say to you, which is they may be able

01:03:59.140 to do all these things to you.

01:04:00.300 They may be able to stop your work being published for the moment, but times will change.

01:04:03.820 Well, why do you hate trans people?

01:04:07.600 But they will never take away your talent.

01:04:10.020 And I mean this from the bottom of my heart.

01:04:12.100 You are a generational talent, Graham.

01:04:13.620 Oh, me?

01:04:14.680 You are.

01:04:15.200 I really appreciate it.

01:04:16.080 Thank you.

01:04:16.800 You inspired me.

01:04:18.300 I'm starting to tear up now to want to be a comedian and want to be.

01:04:21.960 Really?

01:04:22.520 Yeah. 0.99

01:04:22.960 Fucking hell, man. 0.99

01:04:24.180 Father Ted. 1.00

01:04:25.000 Guilty.

01:04:26.360 Yeah.

01:04:26.720 There's a lot.

01:04:27.540 There's about 12 people who've seen my gigs in total are very angry at you, but you,

01:04:32.680 with what you did with your work, it was sensational.

01:04:36.300 And you don't lose that brilliance overnight and through what you've been through.

01:04:41.220 And eventually when you come out of this, because just as sure as night happens, dawn

01:04:46.860 will come.

01:04:47.620 When the dawn will come, what you produce after everything that you've been through will be

01:04:52.640 so beautiful and brilliant.

01:04:54.560 And I can't wait to see it.

01:04:56.120 Oh, me.

01:04:56.780 That means a lot.

01:04:57.540 Thank you.

01:04:58.280 Thank you.

01:04:58.700 I really appreciate it.

01:05:03.580 But it feels like the ending, though.

01:05:05.540 Is that the ending?

01:05:06.600 It sort of has to be now.

01:05:08.020 It sort of feels like after that, anything we ask is going to be weird.

01:05:11.520 But as you know, I mean, we do ask, before we go to questions from our supporters, and

01:05:15.780 a lot of people have asked questions, we do tend to ask our final question, which is

01:05:20.500 what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?

01:05:23.780 And, you know, you might have thoughts on it.

01:05:25.620 You might not.

01:05:26.120 No, I can, I can whistle something up.

01:05:28.420 Yeah?

01:05:28.660 Yeah.

01:05:29.220 Yeah.

01:05:29.520 There you go.

01:05:30.700 Oh, is that, are you asking me now?

01:05:32.380 Oh, I see.

01:05:33.000 Sorry.

01:05:33.560 This is actually like a conversation.

01:05:35.060 That's actually the question.

01:05:36.280 Right, right.

01:05:36.880 Excuse me. 0.99

01:05:37.880 Well, shit, the thing that just jumped into my head is Eric Hoffer's True Believer. 0.97

01:05:43.660 I think everyone should be reading it. 0.99

01:05:45.500 It is a history of mass movements, mass kind of delusions sometimes.

01:05:51.840 And he wrote it in 1953.

01:05:56.160 He was like some working class guy who taught himself how to think in various different libraries

01:06:02.580 and wrote this theory of what connected mass movements, everything from national socialism

01:06:08.180 to Christianity.

01:06:09.560 Actually, did we talk about this earlier?

01:06:11.280 No.

01:06:11.600 No.

01:06:11.920 Oh, good.

01:06:12.340 Okay.

01:06:12.960 He's the guy that said every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business,

01:06:16.960 and eventually degenerates into a racket.

01:06:18.840 Did he say that?

01:06:20.940 That's interesting.

01:06:22.120 Well, basically, he wrote it in 1953, and it could have been written yesterday about

01:06:26.540 this particular movement.

01:06:28.120 It is, it is, it just, this movement ticks all the boxes of one of these kinds of moments

01:06:33.600 in history.

01:06:34.540 You know, it needs, it's usually pretty comfortable people who run these kinds of movements.

01:06:41.220 It's, there has to be a sort of nihilism abroad.

01:06:44.080 That means that it attracts people who've given up hope on other things.

01:06:47.200 It's a very nihilistic moment at the moment.

01:06:49.960 Everyone thinks the world's going to end in a couple of months and so on.

01:06:53.360 And I think all these things have come together in real life, the way he wrote about them.

01:07:01.260 And like, I was just driving, like I was on the tube train up here.

01:07:05.200 And again, I just, you can't highlight it, because you just end up highlighting every, the whole

01:07:10.940 book is yellow, you know, because everything just strikes you as, like there's a whole section

01:07:17.160 in it where he talks about, you know, how faith in a doctrine like gender ideology, or

01:07:25.440 like national socialism, or like communism, is so, is so kind of complete that you can't

01:07:33.000 really have conversations with people about it.

01:07:35.200 They'll cover up their ears before they listen, because you're questioning the doctrine.

01:07:40.180 You're questioning the true faith that will lead everyone into a better world.

01:07:43.520 And there's actually kind of, you know, at the heart of gender ideology, there is, there

01:07:47.580 is a kind of a, a kind of a reach for something good, which is the idea that if we change our

01:07:56.780 language, then the reality of sexism will change.

01:07:59.840 And it's just not true.

01:08:00.960 All that happens is that you create kind of a, a, a kind of a super, uh, um, uh, what's

01:08:10.820 the word?

01:08:11.260 Uh, oh God, you know, when you're a super privileged form of male, right?

01:08:16.560 You know what I mean?

01:08:17.700 The sacred class, I sometimes call, you know, and, uh, that's what's happening.

01:08:22.220 The opposite to what they set out to do.

01:08:24.620 It hasn't, it hasn't destroyed sexism.

01:08:26.640 It has created, as someone puts it, the patriarchy in stilettos, you know, and that's what this

01:08:34.300 is.

01:08:34.820 And, and, uh, yeah, his book will, I think reading that book will, will everybody reading

01:08:40.560 it will just have a light bulb moment, you know?

01:08:43.400 Graham Linhan, thanks for coming on.

01:08:45.980 Follow us over to Locals, but before you do, make sure you get yourself a copy of Tough

01:08:49.620 Crowd and, uh, head over to Locals where we ask Graham your questions. 0.97

01:08:53.080 With both Labour and the Conservatives being so shite, does Graham think a third party might 0.91

01:09:00.080 stand a chance, and if so, who? 0.99

TRIGGERnometry - December 20, 2023

Backstabbed By The Entire Comedy Industry - Graham Linehan

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript