In mid-April, 2023, rumors of the death of the controversial television writer Graham Linehan spread on social media.
"Sad," wrotee one Twitter user on April 13. What appeared to be a screenshot of an obituary for Linehan with his surname misspelled "Lineham" was attached.
(via @SxarletRed/Twitter)
Another user followed it up the following day, writing, "(R)est in piss graham lineham u were a piece of shit i'm glad ur dead." This user also spelled Linehan's name incorrectly.
We found that the claim that Linehan is dead was a hoax.
Linehan, a well-known anti-transgender activist from Ireland, is alive as of this writing.
In fact, on the morning of April 14, (8:14 a.m. EDT), Linehan called for the arrest of a plastic surgeon in an expletive-ridden tweet after another Twitter user, @WomenReadWomen, said the surgeon was "promoting the eunuch gender identity."
"Jesus Christ someone fucking arrest her now," Linehan tweeted in response. And then he wrote a few more tweets in the thread.
(via @Glinner/Twitter)
We also checked news websites from Ireland and the United Kingdom and did not find any news of Linehan's death.
Linehan has previously complained of unfair attacks on him for what he termed defense of women's rights and of losing TV career and marriage. In 2018, police gave him a verbal warning for alleged harassment of a transgender woman on Twitter, which subsequently banned him from the platform (in 2020) for his anti-trans comments. Twitter restored Linehan's account after Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022.