Graham Linehan show staged outside Scottish parliament after second venue cancels | Edinburgh festival 2023

A comedy event featuring Father Ted creator Graham Linehan was staged in the open air outside the Scottish parliament on Thursday evening, after a second Edinburgh venue refused to stage it.

The organisers, Comedy Unleashed, booked the plaza outside Holyrood’s main entrance, and erected a small makeshift stage for an audience of roughly 120 people, after failing to find another indoor venue.

Linehan, seen by transgender rights activists as hateful and extreme in his gender-critical views, performed a short set, telling the audience he had been forced to try comedy after failing to find scriptwriting work for five years because of his stance on transgender issues.

The first venue that had been booked for the event, Leith Arches, cancelled on Tuesday, sparking a fresh row about the law around gender-critical beliefs.

Linehan, 55, had said he was considering legal action against Leith Arches for discrimination on the grounds that gender-critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act.

On Thursday he refused to comment to the Guardian about whether he would take legal action, but told the audience the last few days had been the strangest of his career.

“It’s been such a strange day. I think I’ll leave it there. But I just wanted to say, first of all, I’m really sorry that you got messed around today. As you can tell, despite the animal cruelty, there’s not really much to these jokes …

“It’s just insane. I mean, I’ve been fighting this stuff for five years, and I’ve never seen anything as insane as [the] last few days.”

After the first venue cancelled, Comedy Unleashed told ticket holders that it had arranged for a second venue to host the show, but on Thursday afternoon it said the new venue had also cancelled.

Andy Shaw, Comedy Unleashed’s cofounder, said he carried no ill-will towards the second venue. “I just think it’s become such a big issue that people are just getting cold feet and don’t want the attention, and I understand that,” he said.

“It’s not ideological at all. They just want a quiet life. It has been the hardest gig I have ever organised in my life. It should be a lot easier.”

Earlier, Shaw said they had finally found “a very unusual place” at very short notice.

He said the show, which features five comedians including Linehan, normally ran for 150 minutes with two intervals but Thursday evening’s show would be significantly shorter.

Earlier this summer there was a row over the cancellation of an interview-based event involving Joanna Cherry, the gender-critical Scottish National party MP, as part of this month’s Edinburgh fringe.

The venue, the Stand, cancelled the show after its staff complained about Cherry’s gender-critical beliefs. It had to reverse the ban after Cherry produced a legal opinion, based on recent court decisions, that the venue was unlawfully discriminating against her.

After initially failing to explain its reasons for banning the Linehan event, Leith Arches published an updated statement on Instagram.

It said: “We work very closely with the LGBT+ community, it is a considerable part of our revenue, we believe hosting this one-off show would have a negative effect on our future bookings.”

Michael Foran, an expert on equalities law at Glasgow University, said Leith Arches could defend its decision in law if it could prove the event was cancelled for reasons other than Linehan’s gender-critical views.