Graham Linehan: Difference between revisions

Graham Linehan
Linehan in 2013
Born	(1968-05-22) 22 May 1968 (age 56)[1] Dublin, Ireland
Medium	Television, film, twitter
Nationality	Irish
Years active	1991–present
Genres	Observational comedy, surreal humour
Spouse	Helen Serafinowicz
Children	2
Notable works and roles	Father Ted, The IT Crowd

Graham Linehan (/ˈlɪnəhæn/, born 22 May 1968) is an Irish sitcom writer. He created or co-created the sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd. He has also written for Count Arthur Strong, Brass Eye and The Fast Show. Linehan is a vocal critic of transgender rights activism.

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

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

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

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

Linehan is an active Twitter user.^[5] In 2011 he perpetrated a Twitter hoax around Osama Bin Laden being a fan of The IT Crowd.^[11] On Friday 13 February 2009, Linehan hosted the first BadMovieClub^[12] on Twitter. At 9pm exactly, over 2,000 Twitter users simultaneously pressed 'Play' on the film The Happening (dir. M. Night Shyamalan 2008) and continued to tweet whilst watching, creating a collective viewing experience which generated 40,000 tweets in under 2 hours. The BadMovieClub was repeated at 12 midnight on Saturday 14 February, hosted by Phill Jupitus. In August 2009, when the National Health Service was being attacked by the Republican Party of the United States during an attempt by President Barack Obama to reform the American healthcare system, Linehan created the #welovetheNHS campaign on Twitter in an attempt to fight back in defence of the NHS.^[13][14]

Linehan and Mathews first met while working at Hot Press.^[15] In their early collaborations, they were responsible for segments in many sketch shows, including Alas Smith and Jones, Harry Enfield and Chums, The All New Alexei Sayle Show, The Day Today and the Ted and Ralph characters in The Fast Show (the characters were created by Linehan and Mathews and played by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson). The two men continued their collaboration with Paris^[16] (one series, 1994) and Father Ted (three series, 1995–1998).^[17][18][19] They then wrote the first series of the sketch show Big Train, but Linehan was not involved in the second series.^[20]

They also wrote the "Dearth of A Salesman" episode for the series Coogan's Run, which featured the character Gareth Cheeseman. In late 2003, they were named one of the 50 funniest acts to work in television by The Observer.^[21]

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

Linehan wrote and directed the 2006 Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd, in which he sought to move away from the recent British trend towards mock-documentary comedies. Unlike many series of the time, it was recorded before a studio audience.^[22][23] In November 2008, he was awarded an International Emmy for The IT Crowd.^[24] In 2013, he wrote and directed The Walshes. He co-wrote the first series of the BBC sitcom Motherland and directed its pilot episode.^[25] In 2018 he and Matthews announced plans for a Father Ted musical.^[20]

Linehan and Mathews have had one book published, Father Ted: The Complete Scripts (Paperback – Boxtree – 20 October 2000) ISBN 0-7522-7235-7. They have contributed to various magazines and written surreal liner notes for the popular Volume series of alternative music compilations.

Both Linehan and Mathews have made cameo appearances in programmes they have written. They also made an appearance in the sitcom I'm Alan Partridge as two Irish TV producers considering Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) for a contract.

Linehan has also appeared in The Day Today and in two episodes of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and has had cameos in Black Books (series one, episode two, as "I love books" Guy, and series one, episode five as Fast Food Customer), and the Father Ted episodes "Good Luck Father Ted", "Entertaining Father Stone", "Flight Into Terror", "Cigarettes, Alcohol and Rollerblading" and "Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep". He had cameos in four episodes of The IT Crowd: as Messy Joe's Restaurant Musician, in series one, episode three; the blind sorcerer, in series two, Episode six; as an audience member of Jen's speech, in series three, episode four; and as Beth Gaga Shaggy, in series four, episode three. He appeared in the Identity Parade round of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He has also appeared in the pilot of Little Britain, as well as in series one, episode four, as a bystander who gets in the way of character Kenny Craig when he is attempting to hypnotise, from a distance, a man whose car he has crashed into. He also appeared in series one, episode five, in which he played a journalist called Roy Sloan (from Whizzer and Chips) during a conference with Prime Minister Michael Stevens (Anthony Head). Linehan was one of the writers interviewed by Charlie Brooker in a special interview episode of the fifth series of Brooker's Screenwipe programme, and again on Brooker's Gameswipe in 2010. Linehan also appeared as a guest panellist on Have I Got News for You in 2011 and again in 2012, and he made his debut as a guest on the BBC show QI in the 11th series (K series) in 2013, receiving a score of −19.

In 2007, a documentary about Linehan, his life and his career was produced by Wildfire Films for RTÉ One. This documentary explored the art, craft and deeply competitive business of creating contemporary television comedy. The programme features interviews with several of the UK's most successful television comedy writers and performers including Steve Coogan, Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Paul Whitehouse, Griff Rhys Jones and Ardal O'Hanlon, all of whom have worked with Linehan. It was directed by Adrian McCarthy and produced by Martha O'Neill and Adam Rynne. In 2011, Linehan also appeared with several members of the cast in Channel 4's Father Ted Night, an evening of the writer's favourite episodes and two retrospective documentaries.

On 6 June 2011, Linehan appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme to discuss his adaptation of the Ealing comedy film The Ladykillers for the West End stage. During this appearance, Linehan took issue with Today presenter Justin Webb over what he saw as the attempted staging of an artificial argument between himself and the critic Michael Billington. He later expanded on this criticism in an article published in The Guardian, saying "I'm talking about that very specific, very artificial, very Today programme format of a presenter acting as referee between two people who have been chosen to represent the opposing sides of a manufactured argument. It is a binary view of politics, of life and, as a result, it is also a dishonest one. Replace it with anything – anything – because anything would be better".^[26]

Linehan's children voiced characters in the 2012 Adventure Time episode "Goliad", with Linehan directing the children while taking the producers' instructions over the phone. Linehan planned to write a sequel episode, and sent versions of the story to the production team.^[27] This episode was never made as Adventure Time ended in 2018.

Linehan has tweeted extensively about transgender issues. He became involved after the airing of a 2008 episode of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, drew criticism on Twitter for its storyline in which a character reacts with transphobia after realising that the woman he is dating is transgender.^[28] Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response,^[29] arguing that writing a transphobic character did not make him, or the episode, transphobic.^[28]

Linehan has described himself as sceptical of the self-identification of gender, objecting to "privileged white people saying you must accept anyone who says they are a woman". He has said that "anyone suffering from gender dysphoria needs to be helped and supported", and has voiced concern over early transgender intervention for children.^[28]

Linehan has been an open supporter of the LGB Alliance^[30] which has been called a "transphobic hate group" by critics.^[31] Supporters of LGB Alliance deny this, stating that the group exists "chiefly to defend women's single-sex spaces".^[32][33]

In October 2018, Stephanie Hayden, a transgender woman, sued Linehan for harassment. Hayden alleged that Linehan had shared photos on Twitter of Hayden's family and her life before transition, suggested she was a criminal, and repeatedly misgendered her and deadnamed her by using her previous name.^[34][35] Linehan in turn alleged that Hayden publicised several private addresses linked to his family to silence him.^[36] Linehan was issued with a verbal warning by police not to contact Hayden.^[37]

Linehan has compared the medical transition of children to Nazi experiments on children, saying: "If you were around the time of something terrible happening like Nazism, would you be one of the people who said, 'This is wrong,' despite being opposed?" In the same interview, he described the trans movement as "provid[ing] cover" for "fetishists, con-men, and simply abusive misogynists".^[38][39][40] In a statement to PinkNews about his comments, Linehan said "when a magazine purportedly for gay people, collaborates in homosexual erasure by indulging the straight fantasy that men can be lesbians, something has gone deeply wrong".^[41] In 2018, Linehan praised anti-transgender protesters at that year's London Pride event as "heroes".^[42][43][44]

In January 2019, Linehan expressed concern over the news that Mermaids UK, a charitable advocacy organisation for transgender children and teenagers, was to receive a £500,000 lottery grant to open clinics around the United Kingdom. He posted to blogging website Mumsnet encouraging its users to lobby the National Lottery Community Fund to reverse their decision.^[45][46] The grant was reviewed^[45] and went ahead. In response to Linehan, YouTuber Hbomberguy held a 57-hour fundraising livestream which raised a further £270,000 for Mermaids UK.^[47][48]

In 2019, Linehan was the favourite nominee by viewers to win The Last Leg's "Dick of the Year" award, following the comments he made on social media about transgender people.^[49][29] When Linehan expressed interest in winning the award, presenter Adam Hills disqualified him from receiving it, stating that under the rules, anyone who wants to be named Dick of the Year cannot be.^[50]

In a February 2020 interview with Newsnight, Linehan reiterated his view that the Tavistock Centre's practice of treating children with drugs such as puberty blockers is comparable to Nazi eugenics programmes and experiments on children, and stated that transgender activists had made rape and death threats against feminists.^[51] Following this interview, Eric Pickles, the UK special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, accused Linehan of trivialising the Holocaust.^[52]

• Father Ted (8 episodes, 1997)
• Big Train (6 episodes, 1998)
• Black Books (6 episodes, 2000)
• Little Britain (1 episode, 2003)
• The IT Crowd (25 episodes, 2006–13)
• Count Arthur Strong (20 episodes, 2013–17)
• The Walshes (3 episodes, 2013)
• Shrink (3 episodes, 2017)

Linehan was also an executive producer of the first series of The IT Crowd, and an associate producer of one episode of Father Ted.

• Hello Friend (short, also co-writer, 2003)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Graham Linehan.

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