Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy

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 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 show more 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.

Timely account of the effects of bucking the ideological trend.