Graham Linehan to perform at new venue following Fringe cancellation

A comedy club has announced it has found a new venue for Father Ted writer Graham Linehan at the Edinburgh Fringe, after the original venue cancelled the show he was due to appear in.

On Tuesday evening, Leith Arches announced it was no longer hosting a Comedy Unleashed show on Thursday after learning Linehan, a critic of the trans rights movement, would be performing a stand-up routine.

The venue claimed in a post on Instagram it did not know Linehan, who also wrote The IT Crowd and Black Books, had been booked to perform beforehand.

Comedy Unleashed has since announced on X, the micro-blogging site formerly known as Twitter, that it has found a new venue for Thursday’s planned gig – but opted not to name the place where the show will go ahead.

The club’s post said: “We have found a venue for tomorrow’s gig! The show goes on! (Ticket holders will be emailed with the new address tomorrow afternoon).”

Meanwhile co-founder Andy Shaw told BBC News: “We have found what we think is a really appropriate venue which will become obvious on Thursday night why we think it is particularly appropriate.

The change in venue was announced after Linehan told TalkTV’s Julia Hartley-Brewer in the morning he would consider taking legal action if the Leith Arches refused to host him.

He said: “It was cancelled within a couple of hours. So I had two hours of excitement and fans saying they were going to go.

“It was a sell-out. But you do get used to this kind of thing after a while.

“It never really makes you feel good.

“The only good thing about it is that it’s drawing more attention to the fact that, essentially, a group of highly ideological cultists have taken over institutions across society.

“If they apologise and put the gig on, I’ll say no more about it but otherwise I’ll be looking at legal action.”

Leith Arches said on Tuesday: “We were not aware of the line-up of this show in advance.

“We have made the decision to cancel this show, as we are an inclusive venue and this does not align with our overall values.”

The venue added in a follow-up statement on Thursday morning: “It was brought to our attention at the very last minute of the very controversial line up.

“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 future bookings.

“The decision was not influenced by the pressure of online activists, but by our regular community who use this space on a daily, weekly and [monthly] basis.”