Comedian Graham Linehan said during a free speech event at the Conservative Party conference that he was “the most canceled person in this room”.
Best known for The IT Crowd and Father Ted, his views on gender have led to him being accused of transphobia.
Linehan said in a fringe discussion on Sunday that he found it “very difficult to find places to speak these days.”
Mr Linehan’s comedy show in Edinburgh last August was canceled due to complaints.
The writer has been an outspoken critic of transgender self-identification.
Last month, he claimed he had been refused permission to attend this year’s Conservative Party conference, to be held in Manchester, before the party leader intervened to overturn the decision.
He said he had made an access request to Greater Manchester Police to find out why he was initially banned.
Greater Manchester Police said it was not making decisions about accrediting the conference. The force carries out checks on applicants and then delivers an anonymised list to Conservative Party headquarters for any concerns to be reported.
Linehan shared a platform with historian and Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley, academic Matthew Goodwin, and Mark Glendinning, head of cultural affairs at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Mr. Linehan says his conference pass was initially blocked
The committee said freedom of expression in the UK was being shut down by groups of people who were out of touch with the views of the general public and increasingly intolerant of views they did not share.
Mr Linehan claimed there had been a “soft ideological coup in almost all of our key institutions – the police, academia and even the NHS” and it needed to be stopped.
He also criticized the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for its handling of transgender issues, accusing the corporation of doing everything in its power to “suppress this debate.”
The BBC has been contacted for comment.
Linehan was speaking at a fringe meeting, a one-off event held around the party’s main conference.
The writer has been involved in a number of heated social media disputes with trans activists, and in 2020 was permanently suspended from Twitter which he claimed had violated rules around “hate content”.
His account was reinstated after Elon Musk took over the social media platform.
Mr Linehan co-created the Channel 4 comedy Father Ted, and later wrote Black Books and The IT Crowd. An episode of The IT Crowd from 2008 was criticized for its transgender plotline. . “It was not possible to make enough changes.”
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