{"id":683252,"date":"2026-07-09T23:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T23:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/683252\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T23:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T23:47:11","slug":"graham-linehan-gets-25000-compensation-and-an-apology-from-met-police-after-arrest-graham-linehan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/683252\/","title":{"rendered":"Graham Linehan gets \u00a325,000 compensation and an apology from Met police after arrest | Graham Linehan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has been paid \u00a325,000 in compensation by the Metropolitan police<\/a> and received an apology after his arrest over his gender-critical social media posts.<\/p>\n

Linehan, 57, was detained by armed officers at Heathrow airport last September after a 10-hour flight from Arizona.<\/p>\n

He was told he was being arrested on suspicion of inciting violence in relation to three posts on X and was held at a nearby police station for 12 hours.<\/p>\n

A Met spokesperson said on Thursday: \u201cWe recognise the considerable distress caused to Mr Linehan, and have offered our sincere apologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case prompted a significant change, which means the Met no longer investigates non-crime hate incidents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe this will provide clearer direction for officers, reduce ambiguity and enable them to focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a letter to Linehan, the force accepted there had been \u201cshortcomings in the investigation, the arrest and the imposition of bail conditions\u201d, the Times reported.<\/p>\n

A settlement was reached after a civil claim.<\/p>\n

The main concerns with the investigation were over the systems and guidelines in place at the time, the Guardian understands.<\/p>\n

The first post by Linehan, on 19 April, included a picture of a trans rally and was captioned: \u201cA photo you can smell.\u201d<\/p>\n

He followed that with a tweet saying: \u201cI hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third, on 20 April, said: \u201cIf a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and, if all else fails, punch him in the balls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linehan insisted at the time that while he may have been guilty of making a \u201cbad joke\u201d, he had not been aiming to encourage violence.<\/p>\n

The writer announced in October that the investigation into his social media messages had been dropped, having been placed under bail conditions that banned him from posting on X.<\/p>\n

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The arrest provoked a political backlash, with Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, criticising the force\u2019s actions as \u201cthought-policing\u201d, adding: \u201cSending five officers to arrest a man for a tweet isn\u2019t policing, it\u2019s politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week, Linehan reposted a link to the story about the apology with the message: \u201cThank you for everything\u201d to the campaigning group the Free Speech Union.<\/p>\n

Last November, Linehan was cleared of harassing a transgender activist on social media but found guilty of criminal damage of their mobile phone<\/a> outside a conference in London.<\/p>\n

He had denied harassing Sophia Brooks on social media between 11 and 27 October 2024, and a charge of criminal damage of their mobile phone on 19 October outside the Battle of Ideas conference in Westminster.<\/p>\n

Judge Clarke fined Linehan \u00a3500 and ordered him to pay costs of \u00a3650 and a statutory surcharge of \u00a3200.<\/p>\n

The judge found that the writer had taken Brooks\u2019s phone because he was \u201cangry and fed up\u201d and had damaged it by knocking it to the ground.<\/p>\n

The conviction for damaging their mobile phone was also overturned on appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has been paid \u00a325,000 in compensation by the Metropolitan police and received…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-683252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}