- cross-posted to:
- britishcomedy
- cross-posted to:
- britishcomedy
Two of the UK’s top comedy stars, Richard Ayoade and Jonathan Ross, have received backlash on social media after reviewing The IT Crowd writer Graham Linehan’s memoir.
Irish scribe Linehan has gone from the writer of much-loved Channel 4 comedies The IT Crowd, Father Ted and Black Books to an outspoken anti-transgender activist in recent years, leading many in the UK and Ireland to boycott him.
He fell out of public favour after several incidents where he expressed anti-transgender or transphobic views, including comparing the use of puberty blockers to Nazi eugenics and experiments on children.
Linehan has repeatedly expressed his belief that he is a victim of cancel culture, and that his views have lost him work and caused his divorce.
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Some early reviews of the book have been included as part of its online marketing. One notable name quoted alongside the memoir is Linehan’s former IT Crowd colleague, Ayoade, who played shy computer technician Maurice Moss in the Channel 4 comedy.
Ayoade’s quote reads: “Graham Linehan has long been one of my favourite writers – and this book shows that his brilliance in prose is equal to his brilliance as a screenwriter. It unfolds with the urgency of a Sam Fuller film: that of a man who has been through something that few have experienced but has managed to return, undaunted, to tell us the tale.”
A review from Ross hails Linehan as “one of the best TV comedy writers of all time”. The quote goes on to declare the book “a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered: a) how to create a hit sit-com and b) how it feels to lose everything. It’s funny, complicated and utterly compelling”.
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Journalist and transgender activist India Willoughby wrote: “The Richard Ayoade endorsement of Graham Linehan is really disappointment – because at this point in the gender war, you’d have to use a lot of cognitive dissonance not to see Glinner for who he is.”
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It’s a tricky one as what Richard Ayoade says isn’t intrinsically wrong but it seems unwise. I can see he is trying to be clever and nuanced but that’s all going to be overshadowed by the fact that Graham Linehan is someone who should really keep at arm’s length. He is a great comedy writer but he’s also a terrible person.
Not reviewing it at all would probably have been wiser, but given they’ve worked together I suspect his hands were tied to some extent - and a carefully worded review may well have been the best option.
That’s it, he owes Linehan a lot and clearly respects his ability as a writer so he may feel an obligation to do something.
Jonathan Ross, in the other hand, has no excuse for the blurb he produced.
Another piece about this in the Times this weekend, didn’t want to start another thread about him really:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/graham-linehan-trans-views-comedy-career-family-9rfdpzlpz
Murdoch free link https://tinyurl.com/4pychu6h
It looks like the book is set to be very successful. And I remembered a while back I read a book about the whistleblowers who worked at the Tavistock gender change clinic and thought, yes some of the ways these people were working was shockingly unprofessional (I work for the NHS). So I started to have a minor ‘does thinking that make me transphobic’ panic and then reassured myself by rereading this part:
When the actor David Tennant wore a T-shirt expressing support for trans kids, Linehan described him in a tweet as a “groomer” — a term that implies paedophilia.
He’s a bit of a fruitcake.
I read this last week - I can’t help but feel it’s a bit of a shame. Ayoade has a career well outside of the IT Crowd, I don’t see that Ayoade had any reason to endorse the book other than he genuinely supports Linehan which… well.
I mean Linehan isn’t just someone who posts occasional TERF tweets online, he’s an activist (he went trolling on that dating app, harassed people etc…) So if you’re endorsing his book you’re kind of going all in on that as well.
I can’t imagine the book is going to top the Sunday Times list either way.
I read this last week - I can’t help but feel it’s a bit of a shame. Ayoade has a career well outside of the IT Crowd, I don’t see that Ayoade had any reason to endorse the book other than he genuinely supports Linehan which… well.
I’m, personally, not going to draw that conclusion as The IT Crowd was his big break and I can see how he probably feels he owes him a helping hand now he is doing OK and Linehan isn’t but it does seem like a very bad idea. He can hardly claim that he didn’t know how poorly this would look to a lot of his fans, so I don’t see any kind of “whoops, sorry” PR offensive succeeding and he will lose work because of this.
I mean yeah - at the end of the day we are all reading a lot into someone putting a quote on a friend’s book. I don’t know any of these people in real life so who am I to make assumptions about Ayoade and his beliefs really. It feels off to me, but it’s not my business at the end of the day.
The book reminds me a lot of Alan Partridge’s Bounces Back, in that Glinner really doesn’t seem to have bounced back but judging from the bumpf seems to have written a book saying he has. He seems to have lost so many friends, not to mention his marriage, over an issue which seems to have gripped him like a monomania, it does genuinely make your wonder about his mental state.
I was wondering earlier how many people Linehan might have reached out to for a quote and got rejected though.
