An Edinburgh Fringe Festival venue has cancelled a sold-out comedy show from Father Ted creator Graham Linehan and GB News host Andrew Doyle apparently over the comedians’ views on transgenderism.
Comedy Unleashed, the anti-woke live show established by comedian and GB News host Andrew Doyle, has been forced to look for another venue at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival after the owners of the Leith Arches cancelled the performance, which was set to feature Father Ted creator Graham Linehan, alongside comedians Alistair Williams, Dominic Frisby, and Mary Bourke.
In a post on social media, Doyle — the openly gay comedian behind the satirical Titania McGrath character — revealed that the venue had cancelled the performance apparently over the views on transgenderism of the comedians, with Linehan previously coming under fire from the woke left for declaring that “women are real“.
“We would like to thank the public for bringing to our attention, about a comedian who has been booked for an upcoming comedy show at our venue this Thursday, which we were not made aware of until today, via emails from rightly-so outraged members of our community,” the venue owners stated.
“We do not support this comedian, or his views, and he will not be allowed to perform at our venue and is cancelled from this Thursday’s comedy show with immediate effect. An outside organiser was responsible for the line up and we were unaware as to who was performing until now.
“We are an inclusive venue and will not allow such views to violate our space.”
Our Comedy Unleashed gig at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has been CANCELLED by our venue following online pressure.
It is astonishing that a comedy night at the largest arts festival in the world should be prevented from going ahead, simply because activists are offended.
The… pic.twitter.com/JuepM6aad3
— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) August 15, 2023
Responding to the cancellation, Doyle said: “Our Comedy Unleashed gig at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has been CANCELLED by our venue following online pressure.
“It is astonishing that a comedy night at the largest arts festival in the world should be prevented from going ahead, simply because activists are offended.
“The comedy industry is in a dire state. It’s about time that promoters, venues, comedy critics and comedians made a concerted effort to support free expression in the arts.”
Lenehan, the creator of the widely acclaimed Channel 4 sitcoms Father Ted and Black Books, has claimed that transgenderism activists “took everything” from him, seeking to destroy his career after he refused to admit that biologically male transgender individuals could be women.
The Irish comedic writer, much like J.K. Rowling, was once a darling of the left, yet has now become an object of hate, even being visited on multiple occasions by the police, who warned him over pronoun usage and “deadnaming” transgender people.
Speaking to Breitbart London last year, Linehan said: “The police in the UK have been acting on behalf of what is essentially a criminal gang of misogynists and conmen who use muddled laws to avoid scrutiny and criticism.”
Linehan is not the only comedian booked for the Comedy Unleashed gig in Edinburgh to have faced down the cancel culture mob, with Alistair Williams also facing a similar fate after a comedy routine of his poking fun at the resistance to the Brexit movement from within the British government went viral, resulting in him being blocked from comedy clubs throughout the country. Recently, Williams also took aim at the ever-increasing set of letters included in the ‘LGBTQ2AI+’ acronym.
On Wednesday afternoon, Comedy Unleashed announced that it has successfully found a replacement venue and that ticketholders for the previous show will be emailed with the location on Thursday.
What is LGBTQI+?
See @awilliamscomedy in a night of EDGY comedy on 17th August at Leith Arches
(Details in thread) #edfringe #EdFringe2023 pic.twitter.com/bhYmspXY9h— Comedy Unleashed (@UnleashedComedy) August 14, 2023