Graham Linehan

The autobiography of a cancelled author. Linehan started out as a music writer for the Irish equivalent of the NME, and moved to London and to writing comedy. Some of the comedy was really successful. Then he weighed in on gender ideology and women's rights, and his career was demolished. He is now divorced, has been arrested by British police a few times, lives in Arizona as far as I know, has a Substack, the Glinner Report, and is writing a comedy screenplay, again.

Linehan's framing device show more is poignant, his reading is charmingly accented, and he can be quite funny. The most visceral observation is his remark about how the Irish pub smoking ban uncovered the smells that the cigarette smoke had hidden, of the urinal cakes, and the smells they were supposed to hide. An unanticipated side-effect. Some of his similes moved me to laughter.

I think, given his character, he would have taken the plunge eventually, but he went over the edge under the influence of powerful painkillers, having just undergone testicle removal surgery (cancer). By the time he was out of the hospital his life had been changed, his fair weather friends were all gone, etc.

The narrative is great, but I do not share his convictions about the significance of comedy and music journalism. I am too much the scientist, I guess. show less

As the subtitle (How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy) indicates, this is an autobiography in two halves. The first, a very VERY funny series of portraits and events about Linehan's writing career; the second, a painful narrative about being 'cancelled' because of his questioning of trans rights. At its heart, the story of a man of principle. As all great comedy, Tough Crowd is both funny and thought-provoking.

Is this the funniest TV series ever made? That would be an ecumenical question - but the scripts are every bit as head-spinningly funny as the shows themselves.
Includes dialogue cut from the actual broadcasts, and brief but entertaining commentaries from the writers. I particularly liked their observation that you could add the word 'priest' to any adjective (or other descriptor) and get a new character: thus 'the dancing priest', 'the monkey priest', 'the laughing priest' and so on (all of show more these actually appeared in the series, too...) show less

Howlingly funny scripts from the Channel Four cult comedy series. To quote Amazon.com, "Exiled to remote Craggy Island, Father Ted Crilly shares a house with the breathtakingly stupid Father Dougal and the constantly inebriated Father Jack, who has a small vocabulary and a taste for furniture polish. Their housekeeper, Mrs. Doyle, takes care of them with a never-ending supply of tea and sandwiches." Tragically, the series star (Dermott Morgan) died shortly after the third series concluded show more filming. But what a comic legacy. show less