Graham Linehan Arrested at Heathrow Over Controversial Tweets
GRAHAM Linehan, the acclaimed creator behind Father Ted, The IT Crowd, and Black Books, says he was arrested at Heathrow Airport over a series of tweets deemed gender-critical.
The 57-year-old comedy writer returned from Arizona when he claims five armed police officers were waiting to detain him. He says he was questioned for three tweets he posted earlier this year.
One tweet read: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
Another included a photograph of a pro-trans rally captioned: “A photo you can smell.” A follow-up tweet read: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.”
In a detailed Substack post, Linehan described the arrest: “The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two – five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets.
“In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet. I promise you, I am not making this up.”
Linehan claims he was taken from the plane, placed in a van, and transported to a Heathrow police station. He says officers confiscated his belongings, placed him in a cell, and then questioned him intensively about each tweet.
“The officer conducting [the interview] asked about each of the terrible tweets in turn, with the sort of earnest intensity usually reserved for discussing something serious like… oh, I dunno – crime?…
He mentioned ‘trans people’. I asked him what he meant by the phrase. ‘People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth’.
I said ‘Assigned at birth? Our sex isn’t assigned.’ He called it semantics, I told him he was using activist language. The damage Stonewall has done to the UK police force will take years to mend.”
The stress reportedly had a physical effect. Linehan says a nurse found his blood pressure over 200, leading to a transfer to A&E.
“The stress of being arrested for jokes was literally threatening my life! So I was escorted to A&E, where I write this now after spending about eight hours under observation,” he wrote.
Linehan is scheduled for trial this Thursday at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, facing charges of allegedly harassing transgender activist Sophia Brooks on social media and damaging her mobile phone last October.
After his release, he claims he was handed a single bail condition: no access to X (formerly Twitter).
Father Ted creator Graham Linehan has been arrested by FIVE ARMED POLICE for three trans tweets.
He was so stressed he ended up in hospital & has now been banned from X by the State.
The UK is in deep trouble & Slippery Starmer lied to Trump & Vance.
OUR FREE SPEECH IS GONE! pic.twitter.com/KaHTmBwm05— Dan Wootton (@danwootton) September 2, 2025
“That’s it. No threats, no speeches about the seriousness of my crimes – just a legal gag order designed to shut me up while I’m in the UK, and a demand I face a further interview in October.”
Linehan condemned the wider implications for freedom of speech: “[I was] arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal and taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed him.
To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad.”
This incident has reignited debate over gender-critical speech, trans rights, and policing in the UK. Critics argue it raises questions about the balance between public safety, freedom of expression, and the treatment of dissenting voices online.
