My speech at Genspect, Lisbon

How the BBC spread a contagion

To begin, I’d like you to picture a sunny day in a park in San Francisco. Spring has sprung, and a group of children are collecting flowers. Their teacher instructs them to pick a few to take home to their parents, and they flutter toward the bright red blossoms nearby. It’s all very wholesome.

Sadly, the children have the misfortune of being in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The flowers they’re bringing home will be placed in vases—or vases, if you’re American—on windowsills, next to beds. As night falls and the family sleeps, the flowers bloom, releasing minute spores into the air. These spores settle on each family member, sinking into their pores, entering through slightly parted lips.

Tendrils emerge from the flowers, extending across rooms, slipping under doors, and attaching themselves to each sleeping person. By dawn, where each family member once lay, a pod-like form has grown. Inside, a perfect copy of each person takes shape while the originals turn to dust. The new beings awaken, identical in every way—except for one thing: they exist solely to spread these pretty scarlet flowers.

Now, here’s the really fun thing about that part of the film—it happens at the very start. So, when you watch it a second time, you realize that Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, and the rest of the cast never had a chance. Their fate was sealed before the film even began, and the two hours of running, fighting, and hiding were nothing but an exercise in futility.

I thought of this scene again on a recent visit to Ireland, where I found myself in Dáil Éireann with a group of conservative politicians and intellectuals. Just a few years earlier, we had been at each other’s throats during the lead-up to the abortion referendum. Now, we found ourselves on the same side, fighting against the grotesque form of American cultural imperialism known as the trans rights movement.

During this visit to the Irish Parliament, I heard something that made me shiver. Apparently, the monstrosity that is the Progress Pride flag has been permanently engraved onto a door in the building—a conquering army planting its flag at the heart of Ireland’s legislative power. But this didn’t come at the end of a war of words like the abortion referendum, where at least each side had a chance to make its case. Instead, this was the result of a silent coup—a war fought in whispers, behind closed doors, with no invitation extended to the enemy.

The Progress Pride symbol, highly contentious and despised by both feminists and many gay people, now stands as a victory banner in the halls where Irish laws are made. It represents an ideology that has suddenly become unquestionable, beyond debate. The battle, it seems, is over—and the Irish public didn’t even know it was being fought.

Of course, this situation isn’t unique to Ireland. Like the flowers in Body Snatchers, following the same predatory life cycle, the trans movement has taken root in institutions across the Western world. Much like in the film, the process was silent, subtle, and followed an identical template wherever it unfolded.

There are still many in Ireland who don’t even realize that self-ID is already law. In fact, Irish trans activists were praised in the infamous Dentons Document for successfully pulling the wool over the eyes of the Irish public.

But I haven’t lived in Ireland for nearly 30 years, so for a case study in institutional capture, let’s talk about the BBC.

The BBC once employed me to write television comedy. It never will again—which is convenient because I wouldn’t work for them.

In the last decade, the BBC has undergone a transformation as profound and devastating as that experienced by the unfortunate characters in Body Snatchers. Outwardly, it appears unchanged, but its core purpose and duties have been hollowed out.

"Auntie," as the BBC was once fondly known, now marches in lockstep with ABC in Australia, RTÉ in Ireland, PBS in the United States, and TVNZ in New Zealand. Their coverage of Let Women Speak events was so hostile, so deranged, and so dishonest that it helps explain why media viewership is in freefall.

But back to the UK.

In 2013, a group called All About Trans gained unprecedented access to the BBC. They didn’t storm the building or stage protests. Instead, they used meetings, workshops, and friendly social gatherings. They met with children’s programming teams and enjoyed afternoon tea at the Langham Hotel with senior BBC staff. That same year, the BBC’s drama commissioning team spent a delightful day with trans activists at the London Aquarium.

Why the London Aquarium? Who knows—but I suspect they lingered at the clownfish.

These weren’t formal meetings with minutes and agendas. They were casual, friendly interactions designed to build relationships, shift perspectives, and, most importantly, leave no paper trail.

And it worked spectacularly well. Just three months after the Langham Hotel meeting in November 2013, the BBC’s style guide was rewritten. It now included the language of self-ID, effectively enshrining the concept into BBC policy.

While we were distracted by The Great British Bake Off, trans activists managed to change the very language the BBC uses to describe reality.

The result? A decade of misinformation and misogyny.

When historians examine the rise of the trans movement, they will find a decade-wide black hole in the BBC archives. Instead of robust journalism analyzing an ideology that brought permanent harm to generations of gay, autistic, and gender-nonconforming youth, they will find endless coverage of drag queens, as if they were diplomats negotiating global energy policy.

Programs like I Am Leo led to a spike in gender clinic referrals. The Victoria Derbyshire Show became a platform for unchallenged trans activism. Children’s programming began promoting gender ideology to young, impressionable minds.

But it wasn’t just about what they reported—it was also about what they didn’t report.

Which brings us to Hannah Barnes and her groundbreaking investigation into the Tavistock clinic. When she became one of the first mainstream BBC journalists to report on the medical scandal behind the term “trans kids,” the response was chilling.

In a normal news cycle, a story exposing major failures at a prominent institution like Tavistock would spread across BBC platforms: Newsnight, main bulletins, breakfast TV, panel discussions, and online articles.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, the story was largely confined to Newsnight, while the rest of the BBC ecosystem fell eerily silent. No bulletins, no in-depth interviews, no panel discussions. It was as if the story had hit an invisible wall.

This wasn’t an accident. It was a deliberate suppression of information that didn’t align with the narrative dictated to BBC executives—while sipping Earl Grey at the Langham Hotel.

The same silent influence that got the Progress Pride flag etched onto a door in Dáil Éireann was at work here.

The damage has been done. A generation has been indoctrinated. Lives have been irreparably harmed. Someone needs to be held accountable.

At the very least, the Director-General of the BBC should be summoned before a parliamentary select committee to answer for the corporation’s behavior over the last decade.

But most importantly, we need accountability.

Only then, can we prevent future ideological spores from taking root in young minds.

Thank you.