TOUGH CROWD

Tough Crowd – How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy

GRAHAM LINEHAN – OCTOBER 2023

‘A must-read. Funny and utterly compelling’

Jonathan Ross

Hardback: 288pp

Published: Eye Books (October 2023)

ISBN: 9781785633065

Having cut his teeth in music journalism, Graham Linehan became the finest sitcom writer of his generation. He captured the comedy zeitgeist not just as the co-creator of Father Ted but also with The IT Crowd and Black Books, winning five Baftas and a lifetime achievement award.

Then his life took an unexpected turn. When he championed an unfashionable cause, TV commissioners no longer returned his emails, showbiz pals lost his number and his marriage collapsed.

In an emotionally charged memoir that is by turns hilarious and harrowing, he lets us into the secrets of the writing room and colourfully describes the high-octane atmosphere of a sitcom set. But he also berates an industry where there was no one to stand by his side when he needed help.

Bruised but not beaten, he explains why he chose the hill of women and girls’ rights to die on – and why, despite the hardship of cancellation, he’s not coming down from it any time soon.

No laughing matter: A review of Graham Linehan’s “Tough Crowd”

DANE GIRAUD, FEBRUARY 7 2024

Comedy writer Graham Linehan’s new memoir ‘Tough Crowd’ is a tale of two halves. A categorical comedy great – the co-creator of ‘Father Ted’, ‘Black Books’, and ‘The IT Crowd’ – it is no overstatement to position Linehan as the most important voice in comedy in the UK post Ben Elton (The Young Ones).

We learn just why too with plenty of insights into his comedy craft and productions. But this is only half of Linehan’s story. The second part is a report written from the inside of an F4 tornado of McCarthyist misery. Canceled for gender-critical activism, Linehan’s was a most spectacular fall and one that may have only played out quite the way it did in the UK, where questioning the sexuality of a horse can get one arrested, a premise arguably too surreal for even a Linehan comedy.

After a brisk stroll through his childhood in Dublin (Surprise, surprise! He was bookish and bullied) we’re quickly into his writing career starting as a rock journalist. Linehan’s observation that music was a far better channel for our tribal instincts is one I’ve frequently made myself. A static music industry could even be what’s fuelling the reactionary politics we see the kids embracing today (with the help of the CCCP on platforms such as TikTok) purely through the absence of original content and new forms to be intoxicated by. I’d wage a Port Royal-reeking, long streak of duck shit in a Motorhead T-shirt you’d encounter in the late 80s would’ve been a truckload happier than any kid fused to a phone today, waiting for the latest outrage.

The detail around the creation of Linehan’s shows was certainly welcomed by me, a fellow comedy writer. This section demands multiple readings for any hopeful and even established practitioner because the lessons are numerous and come thick and fast, including some good stuff around the management of writing partnerships.

But we’re almost being offered a handbook, and I did wonder if the inside baseball may have left readers without such aspirations behind. I was reminded of another recent read, a wonderful, exhaustive biography of legendary pianist and songwriter Leon Russell by Bill Janovitz, whose ability to reconstruct, often down to the finest detail, Russell’s early session work with acts like ‘Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ (This Diamond Ring) and producer Phil Spector, played like a magic trick to this reader. Again, I’ve slung an axe in a studio. But for someone who hasn’t?

To start a review by saying the book has two distinct parts could be misread as a complaint about tonal inconsistency. The book does move on to detail a dramatic career collapse, but the comedy lessons offered in the first half serve to better set up the tragedy. This is a man who clearly loves comedy with a still burning passion, and desperately wants to connect with other comedians. And why wouldn’t he? If I ever won Lotto, I’d run daily comedy tables with friends for the rest of my life, and wouldn’t care if anything we produced made it to the screen. Who wouldn’t want to laugh for a living? And so, we’re softened by Linehan’s insights, which for me help make the second half absolutely heartbreaking.

Linehan begins this portion of the book by setting the table and making a case for the gender-critical movement. His critics will say that his approach to his activism has been exceptionally mean-spirited, and I haven’t had the time to root about in his blog to be fair. In the book itself, I didn’t read anything that Georgina Beyer would’ve necessarily disagreed with, in my experience of her during which we discussed the issues at length, though I obviously cannot claim to speak for her. But, whatever transpired, it ended his career, and marriage eventually.

Reading a blow-by-blow account of a cancelation – the work and standing lost, the abandonment by close friends – cannot but force the reader to examine the strength of their moral foundations. Is there any cause you believe in so deeply that you would give everything up for it? I share Linehan’s disgust at the overuse of the ‘You’re on the wrong side of history’ mantra. History doesn’t tend to be kind to society’s censors – in fact, most are recorded as perennial villains. The merits of a case make censorship completely unnecessary. To censor is to emphatically state might is right. Democratic societies will only suffer such supremacist attitudes for so long….