Graham Linehan attacks cancel culture at Conservative conference fringe event

Comedy writer Graham Linehan has told a free speech event at the Conservative Party conference he was "the most cancelled person in this room".

Best known for The IT Crowd and Father Ted, his views on gender have led to him being accused of transphobia.

Mr Linehan told a fringe debate on Sunday he found it "very hard to find places to speak these days".

A comedy show featuring Mr Linehan in Edinburgh was cancelled in August due to complaints.

The writer has been an outspoken critic of transgender self-identification.

Last month, he claimed he had been refused a pass to this year's Conservative Party conference, taking place in Manchester, before the party chairman stepped in to reverse the decision.

He said he had made a subject access request to Greater Manchester Police to find out why it had initially been blocked.

Greater Manchester Police said it does not make decisions on conference accreditation. The force carries out checks on applicants and then hands an anonymised list to Tory HQ flagging any concerns.

Mr Linehan shared a platform with historian and Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley, academic Matthew Goodwin and Marc Glendinning, head of cultural affairs at the Institute for Economic Affairs think tank.

The panel argued that free speech in the UK was being shut down by groups of people who were out of touch with the general public's views and increasingly intolerant of opinions they did not share.

Mr Linehan claimed there had been a "soft ideological coup of nearly all our major institutions - the police, academia and even the NHS" and it needed to be stopped.

He also took aim at the BBC over its treatment of trans issues, accusing the corporation of doing everything it can "to suppress this debate".

The BBC has been approached for comment.

Mr Linehan was speaking at a fringe meeting - an individual event that takes place around the main party conference.

The writer has been involved in a number of acrimonious social media disputes with trans activists, and in 2020 was permanently suspended from Twitter which claimed he had breached rules on "hateful content".

His account was reinstated after Elon Musk took over the social media platform.

Mr Linehan co-created the Channel 4 comedy Father Ted and later wrote Black Books and The IT Crowd. An episode of The IT Crowd from 2008 has been criticised over its transgender plot line.In 2020 Channel 4 removed it from its streaming service saying that "in light of current audience expectations, we concluded it did not meet our standards for remaining available... and it was not possible to make adequate changes".