Hello and welcome back to the spiked podcast I'm Fraser Meyers and this week I'm delighted to have joining me down the line

comedian and broadcaster Andrew Doyle hello and spiked columnist and author Raqib Essan.

Hello.

Coming up on today's show, the cancellation of Graham Linnehan, the calls in Germany to ban the AFD and the autistic. the A comedy gig featuring Graham Linnahan, the comedy writer best known for Father Ted and the IT crowd was

due to host a due to host a gig for comedy unleashed a free speech comedy night

but the venue decided that as an inclusive venue someone who holds Graham's views could not perform.

Graham is known to hold gender critical views. Now Andrew you're involved with Common

At least, you're one of the founders so you're kind of responsible for this gig.

I mean, what the hell was your reaction to all this?

Well it was a bit shocking because when we booked the show, we were a bit late to the party we were a bit late to get

into the fringe brochure we just what we just decided last minute look let's have a presence

in Edinburgh because we think that the comedy industry is very much suffering from group think and that's why comedy unleashed was set up and so we wanted to go up there and platform some comedians who don't normally get platforms so we had a one-off show at the Leith arches on the 17th of August.

And we'd actually advertise the bill as five comics on the bill,

but Graham Linahan, we didn't advertise at first we put a sort of shadow on the

poster with surprise-counciled comedian on it which we thought was sort of a fun way to tease

it and then there were a few days before the show on Monday I

we announced that it was Graham my thinking was I mean I know he's a

contentious figure but my thinking was you know it's too late to cancel

activists aren't going to do anything at this point you know it'll be fine so we just

announced that and then the venue posted on Instagram and they posted this big sort of illiterate screed about how offensive he was and how they wouldn't allow his views to violate their spaces.

I mean it was so very istronic language.

And of course it's just comedians selling jokes that that was was.

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