A performance by right wing commentator Katie Hopkins has triggered a political and cultural row on the Isle of Man, raising questions about free speech, public values and how government\u2011owned venues decide which events to host.<\/p>\n
Hopkins, who first entered the public eye as a contestant on the BBC’s The Apprentice in 2007, performed her show Free Range at the Gaiety Theatre on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
The issue began after Bradley Chambers, who holds a community position as poet and storyteller known as the Manx Bard, described Hopkins as “a vile individual who deliberately sets out to incite hatred and discrimination”.<\/p>\n
The former LBC presenter responded by saying attendance at such venues was voluntary, and wrote a derogatory “ode to the tragic bard” on Facebook, using explicit language.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Manx Radio, Chambers said Hopkins’ appearance at the venue was “inappropriate” at a publicly-funded cultural space.<\/p>\n
The incident has intensified debate about whether publicly-funded venues should host performers whose rhetoric can be inflammatory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A performance by right wing commentator Katie Hopkins has triggered a political and cultural row on the Isle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-709260","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\/709260","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=709260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}