Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has been been arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence in relation to his posts on social media, the Met have confirmed.
While they didn’t confirm the identity of the person arrested, they added that after being taken into police custody, officers had become concerned for his well-being and he was taken to the hospital.
His condition was said to be neither life-threatening nor life-changing, and he has now been bailed pending further investigation, per BBC News.
On his Substack page, Linehan shared details of the arrest, which he said took place as he was returning from Arizona on an inbound American Airlines flight to Heathrow. He claimed to have “been flagged” and “arrested at an airport like a terrorist” (via The Independent). Writing on Substack, the 57-year-old Irishman said he was taken to a cell and then questioned over the posts, published on X in April, relating to him challenging a “trans-identified male” in a “female-only space”.
“The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five,” he wrote on his blog. “They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets.”
In response to Linehan’s claim that he was arrested by armed officers, the Met said: “The arrest was made by officers from the MPS Aviation Unit. It is routine for officers policing airports to carry firearms. These were not drawn or used at any point during the arrest.”
He claimed his belt, bag and electronic devices were confiscated as he was shown to a small cell and he was questioned about his posts, which he claimed were “a serious point made with a joke”.
Recommended
According to Linehan, when a nurse came to check on him, they found his blood pressure was in “stroke territory” because “the stress of being arrested for jokes was literally threatening my life”. This led him to be escorted to A&E.
He added that his sole bail condition is that he is not to go on the X/Twitter platform, and he faces a further interview next month.
Linehan is already facing trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday (September 4) over two separate charges. One is in relation to allegedly harassing transgender activist Sophia Brooks on social media, and the other is for damaging Brooks’ mobile phone last year. He denied the charges at a hearing held in May this year.
In recent years, Linehan has made headlines with his anti-transgender views, being a vocal opponent of concepts including gender self-identification and what he has described as “trans ideology,” leading to a Father Ted musical being axed in 2022.
Prior to that, in 2018, Linehan was issued a verbal harassment warning by police after he was involved in an online row with a transgender activist.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.