Thread by @AidanCTweets

.@RichardAyoade, star of The IT Crowd, has described the writer of The IT Crowd as "a man of great principle," when, in reality, Graham has abandoned every principle he (supposedly) had to get back at the people who said a transphobic episode of The IT Crowd was transphobic. 1/

What principles? Women's rights?

Graham supported the Irish pro-choice movement in the 2018 referendum. Today he refers to the women who achieved that victory as "ball-cradling handmaidens," while sharing articles by the anti-choice Irish Religious Right on his feed. 2/

Free speech?

Graham says he wants debate, but what he does is abuse and harass, and encourage abuse and harassment, of his critics, trans people and any celebrity who supports trans rights in an order to shut them up and drive them off social media. If that doesn't work... 3/

...Graham will use his wealth to issue legal letters, privately, to threaten to sue people if they don't stop criticising his views. A classic wealthy crybully. He does this so often that he said he has turned to ChatGPT of late to help him writing "legal-sounding" letters. 4/

But surely he still supports gay rights?

If a gay man supports trans rights, Graham will refer to him as "a groomer", which is how homophobes have long slurred gay men, by implying paedophilia. And, again, no issue sharing articles by the homophobic Religious Right. 5/

There are some prominent people in the so-called "gender critical" movement who are anti-marriage equality campaigners of old, and he has no issue allying with these people, which people who are principled in their support of gay rights don't do. 6/

How about The Truth?

Before his current crusade he said he used to use social media to get back at "blue ticks" (famous people) who criticised his shows, and he realised the power of Twitter when a "joke" lie he told about a famous person went viral, and was believed 7/

So, he was never principled about the Truth, and these days he tells the most extraordinary lies about people who criticise him, often inventing entire fake narratives about them. He often has to delete tweets because he believes anti-trans parodies are true. 8/

And then he'll say the fact that he even thought it was true shows how mad "trans rights" is. E.g. he believed the tabloid lie that Ian Huntley was trans, and even after it was retracted he still went on a podcast with his "the fact that I thought it was true..." lie. 9/

Surely he believes in the principle of allyship in the GC movement?

Hardly.

He has written multiple comments abusing women on his side because they dared to criticise him. He wrote a blog once which ended with him telling a woman on side to "shut the fuck up." 10/

As a staunch, principled Leftist, he must have a strong aversion to the Far Right?

At an anti-trans rally in Ireland Graham posed for a smiling picture with a notorious member of the Irish Far Right. Funny story about that...11/

...a few days later, the same guy was at a fascist rally in Ireland where he was parading a mock gallows with pictures of Irish female politicians plastered all over it. Did Graham stand up for those women against these threats, and criticise his new friend? Of course not. 12/

On the principle of "defending women," @RichardAyoade is supposedly friends with Aisling Bea and Sara Pascoe. Graham regularly abuses these women, and implied once on a podcast that they were too busy taking coke in posh, Soho pubs to "stand up for women's rights." 13/

@RichardAyoade Graham was also temporarily suspended from Twitter because he tweeted a "joke" about killing these women.

Graham is only principled on "defending women" if they are his allies, and they don't ever criticise him. 14/

@RichardAyoade It should be noted that Aisling and Sara have never said anything about Graham publicly. The reason they get all this abuse and harassment is that they are famous women in comedy who simply support LGBT+ rights, and Graham takes that personally. 15/

@RichardAyoade Surely Graham still believes that climate change is happening and is caused by human activity?

A couple of years ago he said he has begun to question this because it is being peddled by The Left and it's hard for him to believe anything people who support trans rights say. 16/

@RichardAyoade Ironically, @RichardAyoade said that Graham was "a man of great principle" in an interview with The Daily Mail. Before his crusade, Graham described the Mail as a danger to women and children and as a tabloid rag. These days he writes in The Mail and shares articles by them. 17/

@RichardAyoade What principles are left? Surely he believes in worker's rights, and women getting equal pay?

He says his only income is his Substack blog, and, by his figures, he makes 75K a year from it. The thing is, it's mostly written by an unpaid woman who is "happy to volunteer." 18/

@RichardAyoade If Richard was being interviewed by a decent journalist, the obvious follow-up question is "what principles are you talking about, @RichardAyoade ?"

I can only think of one principle Graham has maintained. 19/

@RichardAyoade Graham's only principle is himself.
Nothing is more important. He says himself his entire crusade began years ago when there was criticism of a trans storyline in an IT Crowd episode, as I said at the top of this thread. He obviously held a deep grudge over that criticism. 20/

@RichardAyoade He described researching "the topic," and, lo and behold, he discovered that he had not been transphobic, and that, in fact, all of his critics were essentially child-catching, evil paedo monsters. Years later, when he was recovering from a testicular cancer operation...21/

@RichardAyoade ...he decided to use his Twitter account to unleash this info, sure that other celebrities and colleagues would quickly understand how wronged he had been, and join the fight, and he could then step back and go back to abusing other critics of his other shows, presumably. 22/

@RichardAyoade What's unusual about @RichardAyoade's endorsement is that it's very rare for a former colleague to tie themselves and their own reputation to Graham like this. Graham says himself, most of his former friends and colleagues want nothing to do with him. 23/

@RichardAyoade This could be to do with the fact that sometimes he goes on the most abusive rants about friends he thinks have betrayed him. For example, he once said of Neil Hannon that he suspects Neil thinks more of animal rights than children's rights. Again, Neil did nothing...24/

@RichardAyoade ...except not publicly endorse Graham's personal crusade against an entire community because some people dared criticise him.

Arthur Matthews did support Graham for a time, but even that wasn't enough to spare him from the current public abuse he gets. 25/

@RichardAyoade Giving him the benefit of the doubt, maybe @RichardAyoade doesn't know all this, because there are umpteen mainstream articles portraying Graham as a victim of "trans rights activists", and very few describing what he actually does on social media. 26/