Father Ted Writer: Graham Norton has betrayed me.

FATHER Ted writer Graham Linehan has hit out at trans activists, claiming they often have a financial interest in persuading children to change sex.

Speaking to GB News’s Andrew Doyle at the Battle of Ideas festival in London, he also said he was “disappointed” by comments from Graham Norton who has claimed that cancel culture does not exist.

Asked about being dropped by Hat Trick Productions from involvement in a musical version of Father Ted because of views, he said: “The way I look at it is it’s preemptive cultural vandalism. It’s something that’s been cancelled before it even appeared.

“I don’t really know what to say except they’ve never told me what I’ve done wrong. They’ve never told me what I’ve said that they disagree with. When I asked once, someone in the room rolled their eyes, as if it was obvious. Well, actually, it’s not obvious.”

Asked about being branded transphobic by activists, he said: “Everybody just assumed all this to be true. Like Douglas Murray often says, people walk into these traps that they didn’t even know were there.

“Whenever I see someone apologise, I just think, ‘oh, no, don’t ever apologise’.”

He was also asked about comments made by Graham Norton, who claimed there is no such thing as cancel-culture, it is just accountability.

Mr Linehan said: “Accountability for what? For revealing that children are being hurt, like I found from Elaine Miller, who’s a physiotherapist, (who told me) that young girls who are on testosterone for enough amount of time will go into the menopause 30 years too early. None of these kids are being told this. They’re being sold the vision of trans transitioning.

“Ben Cohen did a poster of just a man with a flat chest and hair on his chest, and called it ‘trans joy’. How many young kids will have read that and thought that this is just a wonderful way to express
themselves? It carries massive medical consequences.

“And these kids just are being lied to and they’re kind of grooming each other, they’re being groomed by bad actors, not the Harry Potter gang, but it’s a huge society-wide problem.

“I’ve been contacted by Scottish rape victims who can’t go to rape crisis services because there’s a man in charge of Edinburgh Rape Crisis. I’ve been contacted by therapists, one therapist said these young kids come in in tears because they think JK Rowling wants them dead.

“And she can’t tell them that it’s not true, because the kids might report her to her accreditation body.”

“I find Graham Norton personally such a betrayal, because one of the first things he did was his role on Father Ted, there is no way he cannot know about what’s happened to me.

“For him to say there’s no cancel culture, I don’t know what to say about it, but he’s really disappointed me.”