Students of sitcom writing courses are taught to take their hapless central characters and have them do something that makes life worse for themselves. With hilarious consequences. And then have them do something that makes things even worse. Watch any great sitcom from Fawlty Towers to The Office and, indeed, Father Ted and you will see the pattern.
The deep irony that runs through Graham Linehan’s important memoir is the way in which his story resembles this narrative cycle – something he writes about at some length when covering the craft of sitcom writing – only without the joke. There is, admittedly, some grim humour about his first major descent into public opprobrium on Twitter and beyond. Coming round from an operation to have a testicle removed (this sounds like a set-up for a punchline but is indeed what happened) and under the influence of some powerful (presumably opioid) pain-reduction medication, Linehan picked up his phone, opened Twitter and made one or two typically pithy comments before succumbing once again to sleep. When he next woke up, his life had changed.
At the risk of coming across a bit meta, I would argue that Tough Crowd is at least as much about narrative arcs as it is about the destruction of a decent man’s livelihood, reputation and domestic happiness by the cultural Marxist mob. Indeed, the first half of the book – charting as it does Linehan’s career from solitary Irish adolescence to music reviewer and, finally, comedy writer and director – is all to do with learning his craft. His post-punk music reviews for a small Irish magazine Hot Press were deliberately spiky and personal, so much so that when he took a similar job in London, he quit before even starting on finding out that his new employer’s house style forbade the use of the word ‘I’. Perhaps it was this training that enables him to describe pronouns in Twitter bios as “cat bells for idiots”. This isn’t exactly Lawrence of Arabia but I couldn’t help seeing Linehan’s career journey as the perfect rehearsal for where he now finds himself.
The second half of the book is a painful read and one can only imagine what it was like to experience it. Linehan told the Daily Telegraph that he had to dispose of his first draft because it was too angry. It would have been the easiest choice in the world for him to back away from Twitter rows with social justice warriors and yet his natural stubbornness appears to have melded with his deep-seated sense of decency. This decency is partly explained by his touching descriptions of his family background: a loving couple for parents and a father who told him to stand up for women and not to be like James Bond. In the throes of having his life ripped apart around him, he simply asked when questioned why he persisted in supporting the rights of biological women: “I will not abandon my daughter.”
Given Linehan’s attachment to his parents and children, the fragmentation of his family is particularly hard to read. If anyone doubts that the cultural Marxist mob really is out to destroy its enemies, read the description of Linehan’s loss of his livelihood and his wife’s (spoiler alert: soon-to-be-ex-wife) distress at activists targeting their house. In the fall-out from Linehan’s destruction, many people do not come out well. While not quite in Rowling territory as far as wealth goes, Jimmy Mulville has done very well indeed out of Hat Trick Productions (due in part to the success of Father Ted) but chose not to stand up for Linehan when given the opportunity.
Graham Linehan’s resilience is remarkable and I wonder how many others in the same situation could have written a final chapter titled ‘Green Shoots’. He finds optimism in the allyship he has found, particularly among gender critical feminists and appears more appalled at their poor treatment than at his own. He surgically takes apart the mob’s misogyny, pointing out as one of many examples the abuse of Hibo Wardere, the Somali-born author and activist that has spent her life campaigning against female genital mutilation. In a further slightly meta turn, he describes efforts by campaigners to get the publishers of the book to pull out.
Even following the book’s publication, Jonathan Ross and Richard Ayoade were lacerated on social media for their endorsements on the book’s cover: “Well that’s Richard Ayoade in the bin,” posted India Willoughby on X, “along with already confirmed terf Jonathan Ross. What is wrong with these people?” Both have survived the bin, it seems, suggesting that there might be something in Linehan’s optimism.
Linehan continues bravely to resist efforts to silence him, notably performing outdoors in Edinburgh after two Fringe venues cancelled a planned stand-up show by Comedy Unleashed. Comedy Unleashed, co-founded by Andrew Doyle and Andy Shaw, has since staged sets from Linehan at the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green to the audience’s huge pleasure. Is it hoping too much to see Tough Crowd as marking the high-water mark of cancel culture in the U.K.? While his life may not travel full circle back to the status quo like that of Father Ted Crilly in episode after episode, one can at least hope that this brave and principled man can derive some happiness from the support he has so consistently provided to others.
Tough Crowd by Graham Linehan is available from Amazon and other bookshops.
Ian Price is a Business Psychologist. Find him on X (Twitter). He is the author of the Anti-Human Substack page, where this article first appeared. Subscribe here.
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I had never heard of handball until seeing this article.
Me neither but I’m liking the players. A lot.
Brilliant news.
Ww need the IHF to dig their feet in and for the players to form a single, defiant block and give the IHF authorities a monumental sex and travel response.
This has the potential to be a real goody. A sporting war. Loads of publicity and lots of bad press for the poison pushers, statistics all over the place, tragic stories. Billy and Klaus flapping. Bourla nowhere to be seen. Fishy in his cave. Sage in a bunker somewhere. Michie on a fact- finding mission in Antartica and Raine AWOL.
Marvellous.
Come on you lot.
Oh I fervently hope so.
In my own circle of musicians we dodged a bullet when a minority of Karens on a management committee tried to make vaccination a requirement of performing a symphony concert. They failed to impose the requirement, but then the venue owners imposed their own restrictions which scuppered the concert at the last moment. It’s chaos. We can’t be sure that some unknown authoritarian Karen isn’t going to veto our next attempt. Legal action looks prohibitively expensive, presumably it would be ECHR Right of Assembly Case versus Article 13 lawfare.
That’s upsetting to hear.
All the best
Michie the Bichie in the snow ! Frostbite would be too kind ! Mind you her hatchet face would probably melt the thickest ice
Nice one Freddy
The person who runs the IHF needs to be named and publicly shamed for the petty tyrant that he is.
Not yet. We want a proper set to, something that even The Times cannot ignore.
Come on lads. Get in to them!
Being a personal fiefdom, The Times can ignore whatever it wants!
I’ve looked him up. His name is Hassan Moustafa.
He’s been the president of the federation since 2000. So he’s been running the sport for 22 years, being reelected 6 times, the last 3 unopposed.
I bet he runs it like a personal fiefdom. That’s how most of these international federations operate, accountable to no one but themselves.
The Sep Blatter of Handball then !
You beat me to it Freddy.
Since when does the International Handball Federation, a perfectly private organization, have the authority to prescribe mandatory medical procedures for people attending or playing handball matches?
NB: The obvious answer is It doesn’t.
Governments have signalled over the last three years that they are quite happy for private companies and NGOs to do as they like in this regard and essentially do their dirty promotion and enforcement work for them.
And these international sports federations are completely unaccountable to anyone but themselves. Not unlike the WHO or UN. They have these pseudo democratic processes that elevate a delegate from each country to a global council which then sets rules for the entire world. And because it’s “democratic” then everyone has to follow their rules.
The moment you open your eyes, it’s impossible not to see the world as just a series of cartels. The pharma cartel, the media cartel, the energy cartel, all the sports cartels, the tech cartels, the banking cartel… etc….
The thing is the IHF really doesn’t have this authority, no more than they can randomly arrest people on premises they happened to rent. It’s neither a sovereign government enforcing some laws on its own territory nor an organization created by sovereign governments which have chosen to delegate certain powers to it. The people behind this may have the chutzpah to try it nevertheless, on the grounds that bullying oftentimes works, but bullying is all they have to support their stance.
They can keep the players out of the tournament which belongs to them, unless there are laws explicitly prohibiting that sort of discrimination.
I don’t know what the laws in Sweden and Poland say in this regard.
Of course, the players can get together and decide to boycott. At this point, they’re insane if they don’t.
After Damar Hamlin, I find it hard to imagine there is any athlete of any note who is not concerned about the vaxxes and certainly don’t want any / any more at this point in time. It only stops when we make it stop.
I don’t think your theory that the IHF is a sovereign government which has automatic exterritoriality in any place it may rent somewhere and is thus not subject to the laws of the countries its operating in and authorized to make up its own laws as it sees fit and enforce them violently is correct. But please feel free to prove me wrong by coming up with something which shows that private associations of businesspeople do actually have these rights in Sweden and Poland.
Re private companies setting mandates…
The situation is really bad in Australia where it’s likely millions have been impacted by jab mandates set by state governments, businesses, sports clubs etc.
In regard to companies, I’m challenging the jab mandate set by Westpac Bank for its employees, a jab mandate which is still in place.
See my email to the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Westpac Group: Westpac and Covid jab mandates – why were employees denied a voluntary decision on this medical intervention? 4 January 2023.
Well maybe, but where were they when people including children were being forced, coerced and gaslighted into being injected and generally vilified if they weren’t.
Most sports governing bodies are inept, corrupt because they are monopolies. Competition is the only thing that can keep them on their toes. There is little to prevent a group of professionals setting up a more democratic leaner and meaner organisation and ensure by a comprehensive constitution that the tendency to corruption and being captured by bad actors is democratically blocked. Two competing governing bodies in a region or country tend to keep each other a bit more efficient and honest. Perhaps Iceland should make a start.
Now the “Long march through the institutions’ is complete the march through sporting associations seems well underway as the England squad demonstrated in Quatar.