The Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan, best known for creating Father Ted and The IT Crowd, was arrested at Heathrow Airport over social media posts criticizing transgender ideology.
Linehan was met by five armed officers on arrival in London and detained in connection with three posts made on Elon Musk’s X platform.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed the arrest was carried out by its Aviation Unit, whose officers routinely carry firearms at airports. A spokeswoman said the weapons were not drawn or used at any stage.
The posts under investigation included one in which Linehan wrote that men entering female-only spaces were committing abusive acts and should be challenged, with police called if necessary.
In another post, he said: “Make a scene, call the cops, and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
A third stated: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** ’em.”
Linehan said he was taken into custody, locked in a cell, and later taken to the hospital because of stress. He added that the condition for his release was that he stop posting on X.
“I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online — all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers,” he wrote on his Substack.
Britain is now a total laughing stock – a country where we arrest the authors of light comedies and interrogate them about their tweets. It would be laughable it it wasn’t so serious.
– Graham Linehan on his arrest today pic.twitter.com/JaCKKtz271— Neil O’Brien (@NeilDotObrien) September 2, 2025
He also mocked the sheer scale of the police operation.
“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, who recently appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, has become one of the most outspoken critics of transgender ideology in Britain and Ireland.
The arrest was widely condemned across social media by the likes of J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk and prominent politicians.
What the fuck has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable. https://t.co/CRl2n9rorh
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 2, 2025
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 2, 2025
Bev Turner on free speech and the arrest of Graham Linehan:
‘Elon Musk says we’re living in a police state. JD Vance is worried about the UK. I’ll be raising this at the White House, it’s clear free speech is one issue where Britain and America are worlds apart.’ pic.twitter.com/CwSoOpgUP1
— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 2, 2025
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