Dear Bill Maher

You owe me an apology, sir

Dear Bill Maher,

On the September 12, 2025 episode of Real Time, whilst discussing my arrest at Heathrow Airport, you said: “Last week, the Irish sitcom writer Graham Linehan, who’s won an Emmy and five BAFTA awards, got off a plane at Heathrow and got arrested by five British police officers, not because he was selling drones to the Houthis, just because he’s a crank who spends way too much time online ranting about gender ideology.”

You also stated: “Some have expressed that opinion with literary sophistication, like J. K. Rowling. Some by getting big laughs, like Dave Chappelle. And some are downright ugly about it, like Linehan.”

I had to wait several days before I could write this. Your words hurt - they always do when they come from establishment figures with the platforms and protections I’ve never had. But I didn’t wait because of that. I waited because the sheer audacity of what you did demanded a measured response: calling a fellow journalist a ‘crank’ for investigating a story you’ve ignored for a decade.

Let me explain why your characterisation of me is both unfair and callous.

I have been covering the harms of gender ideology since 2017 - eight years ago. In 2018, I joined thousands of others in asking for a more civilised debate on an issue that affects the safeguarding of children and the rights of women. For this, I was cancelled across the board. I lost my career, my marriage, my financial stability. I was made notorious by flippant. unserious commentators like yourself, and then punished for my notoriety.

For nearly a decade, I have been subjected to relentless litigation by dangerous men, including one paedophile fraudster. I lost a musical that would have been my pension. My arrest at Heathrow was the latest in a pattern of police harassment orchestrated by trans activists - the same people whose targeting of women and children I’ve spent years exposing.

During these eight years, I have given a platform to numerous experts, journalists, and advocates who have been doing the difficult work of documenting the harms being done to children and women in the name of gender ideology. Like Kara Dansky - a feminist attorney who has testified before Congress, authored two books on the subject, and been a leading voice for women’s rights in this debate. You have never invited her on Real Time. I interviewed and published her years before you addressed this issue with any substance. The list of women I have spoken to includes Mia Hughes, Stella O’Malley, Kelly-Jay Keen, Helen Joyce, Maya Forstater, Megan Murphy, and Genevieve Gluck, among many others. I imagine this letter is the first you’re aware of their existence.

You didn’t substantively address this issue on Real Time until May 2022 - five years after I began, and three years after you briefly mocked Democratic candidates’ positions on it in 2019. Your May 2022 segment asked: “If this spike in trans children is all natural, why is it regional? Either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them.” These are important questions. They’re questions people like me had been asking for years whilst you remained silent.

Let’s talk about Jazz Jennings - a name that I’m fairly sure has never come up on Real Time. He (yes, he) has been in the public eye since the age of six - 18 years of documented exposure. Since July 2015, he has been the subject of a TLC reality programme: ten years, eight seasons of televised child abuse, the systematic destruction of a child’s health, broadcast as entertainment.

This is a boy who was gender non-conforming as a toddler. His terrible error, for which he will be punished for the reminder of his life. was being himself in view of an opportunist, fame-hungry mother. He has been medically transitioned, including castration, all with parental consent and broadcast for public consumption. This is what you dismiss as crank obsession: a televised crime against humanity that you should have been investigating but instead left to people like me with a fraction of your audience and resources.

You call my approach ugly. If I am ugly, it is because I am covering an ugly topic whilst receiving ugly threats, and whilst journalists and humorists like yourself have left their posts. I apologize for daring to enter this debate years before either Chappelle or Rowling mentioned it - and for doing so without the protection of their millions or billions, unable to defend myself from either trans activists or establishment figures like yourself.

Throughout all this, I have remained at my post. You never even turned up for duty.

I understand why you and others have been reluctant to cover this issue. I understand the fear. The consequences for speaking up are real, as I can attest. But that fear does not give you the right to defame someone who has sacrificed his career and safety to do the work you have not done.

This was an episode defending free speech. In the same segment where you condemned my arrest for speaking, you called me a crank for what I said. You’re defending the principle whilst attacking the person who actually used it, proving you’re no friend to those who risk everything by speaking up.

I am asking you now to do the right thing. Issue a public apology on Real Time - the same platform where you defamed me. Acknowledge that calling me a “crank” was wrong, and that my work on this issue has been substantive and necessary.

I believe you’re capable of recognising when you’ve been unfair to someone, particularly a fellow comedian and journalist who has been doing difficult work under difficult circumstances.

Graham Linehan