Daniel Radcliffe and co must wish that this bitter row would be forgotten. But it won’t
In Tough Crowd, Graham Linehan’s new book chronicling his battle against militant trans activism, the comedy writer reserves particular scorn for the three main stars of the Harry Potter films. When JK Rowling was monstered on social media for daring to speak up in support of women’s rights, those three actors – Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint – could have leapt to her defence. But they did not. Instead, they each loftily proclaimed their support for the trans rights movement.
“[They] instantly betrayed her,” Mr Linehan writes. “[They] deserve to be remembered as symbols of the most remarkable arrogance, cowardice and ingratitude.”
He needn’t worry. Because one day, I strongly suspect, they will be.
Obviously none of us is obliged to share the opinions of the people we worked for at the start of our careers. Whenever I sit down to write a column, I do not first ring up the manager of the Edinburgh branch of Bargain Books I worked at in summer 2001, just to check that my views on Sir Keir Starmer or the Duchess of Sussex meet her approval. Nor do I run my opinions on Black Lives Matter or Just Stop Oil past the former editor of J17, the long-defunct teenage girls’ magazine for which I was junior staff writer in 2003.