The scriptwriter Graham Linehan is considering legal action against the Edinburgh venue that cancelled his comedy show after complaints from customers.
On Tuesday morning Leith Arches cancelled an event featuring Linehan and four other comedians booked to take place on Thursday after stating, in a deleted Instagram post, that “outraged members of our community” had protested at his appearance.
It is widely believed the protests centred on Linehan’s gender critical views and his combative stance on trans rights, which are regarded by trans rights activists as hateful and extremely hostile. Twitter banned Linehan but reinstated him after Elon Musk’s takeover of the site.
Linehan told TalkTV that unless the venue allowed the show to go ahead, he would take legal advice. “I would suggest that Leith Arches reverses course because they’ve said enough online for an easy win in the courts.
“If they apologise and put the gig back on, I’ll say no more about it, but otherwise I’m going to be looking at legal action.”
However, it later emerged that Comedy Unleashed, the production company behind the cancelled event, which Linehan said was sold out, had found another venue in Edinburgh willing to host it.
Andy Shaw, the company’s co-founder, said ticket holders would be contacted on Thursday afternoon to be told where and when it would take place, “like an old-fashioned rave gig [where people are told] to meet up in a car park”.
Shaw said if Leith Arches apologised publicly to his company and Linehan, then as far as he was concerned, legal action would not be an issue. “The most important thing is we want the show to go on,” he said.
Leith Arches has yet to respond to a request for a comment.
This controversy follows a similar row over a decision by another Edinburgh venue, the Stand, to cancel a fringe show by Joanna Cherry KC, a Scottish National party MP, because of her gender critical views.
The Stand reversed its decision after Cherry published legal opinion that the ban was a clear breach of the Equality Act because her gender critical beliefs were a protected philosophical view. Her show took place last week.
Dr Michael Foran, a specialist in equalities law at Glasgow University, said there were obvious similarities between the Cherry and Linehan cases, but it was still not clear the basis on which Leith Arches had cancelled Linehan’s event.
Leith Arches, which deleted its original Instagram post referring to “outraged” complainants and replaced it with a shorter one later on Tuesday, has not said explicitly why Linehan was banned.
However, unless Leith Arches could prove its decision was not wholly or substantially based on Linehan’s gender critical beliefs, its actions would constitute unlawful discrimination under the act, he said.
“On the face of it, it seems very similar to the Jo Cherry case,” Foran said. “The point at which it might be different is if their reason for cancelling the event isn’t to do with Graham Linehan’s gender critical views, it was something else, the onus would really be on the venue to establish that.”
