The creator of celebrated comedy programmes, including Father Ted and The IT Crowd, said on Tuesday that upon recently arriving at Heathrow Airport, he was met by five “armed police officers” who he says arrested him over “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 (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up),” Linehan wrote on his Substack.
According to the Irish writer, the posts for which he was arrested included one in which he argued that biological men who enter female-only spaces are committing a “violent and abusive act”. “Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls,” Linehan suggested.
Another included a photograph of an LGBTQ+ rally in London, which Linehan captioned: “A photo you can smell”.
