Soondra Appavoo

@harrym_vids Just back from 11 day road trip in my Lotus Emira. Strasbourg, Liechtenstein, Oberalppass, Gottard Pass, Lugano, Como, Milan, Portofino, Antibes, Mâcon, Blighty. Fantastic car, fantastic trip

I love a European road trip and this has been a good one.. #Porsche911 #turbos

@ProfKarolSikora that's great - congratulations Karol!

It was recently our 50th wedding anniversary. We recreated our wedding picture with the same people, half a century apart - even the bridesmaids! A very happy and rewarding fifty years, filled with family and joy.

@ProfKarolSikora Happy birthday Karol!

Wonderful birthday yesterday with the family. Probably needed a few more candles...

@lmhoxford Fabulous!

Keen to find out more about our namesake? J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language Marion Turner talks about Lady Margaret Beaufort ahead of Lady Margaret Day tomorrow. Celebrate what LMH means to you by donating here: lmh.ox.ac.uk/donate #YourDayToGive

@MikeMoranMBE @MEIbizaHotel Looks great Mike!

@soondra @MEIbizaHotel Thank you Soondra. James acted as a groomsman, he enjoyed seeing his sister being married off!

Such a lovely day for my daughter’s wedding in Ibiza. We were joined by 75 family and friends for a wonderful celebration @MEIbizaHotel. Congratulations Jennifer & Lewis, enjoy your honeymoon and the rest of your lives together.

A few years ago I had an idea for a stage musical based on Father Ted, an idea I felt was equal to and respectful of the enduring affection many held for the residents of Craggy Island’s parochial house. The story touched on themes that seemed big enough for a West End stage. Jimmy Mulville of Hat Trick Productions @HatTrickProd was excited by my pitch and accompanied me to Dublin to convince my old writing partner Arthur Mathews to embark with us on the project. We then enlisted Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, who like Arthur, was one of my oldest friends and one whose development as a songwriter I had watched with delight over the previous three decades. We began work on a script, encountering all the usual obstacles. Our first drafts were messy and overlong but soon we discovered the key to each character's story and it came alive. Neil started delivering songs—each one better than the last. Through them, Ted revealed new, hilarious depths to his frustration and Mrs.Doyle had an absolute showstopper that I’m sure would have brought the audience to their feet. All this to carry the audience merrily along to what I felt was the show's greatest strength, its ending. It was an ending that wrapped up the characters’ stories once and for all, and perhaps shook off some of the gloom associated with the show since Dermot Morgan’s tragic death only days after our final wrap party in 1998. While we were working on the show, trans activists were busy trying to destroy my life. I had noticed some years before that troubled children were placing themselves on an irreversible medical pathway that was deeply damaging to their health and peace of mind. In this, they were encouraged by legacy LGB organizations that had catastrophically lost their way. When I began speaking up about it, trans activists reacted as they always do, by contacting possible employers, smearing my name in propaganda outlets like Pink News, which would later come after JK Rowling when she entered the fray. The police were sent to my door multiple times. I was sued by a succession of activists, one of whom was a child predator and vexatious litigant. But I felt that my colleagues, who were so close to me during all this, who saw the effect that the abuse was having on my life and my ability to make a living, would stand by my side. That didn’t happen. The last time I worked on the Father Ted musical. We presented the whole show to executive producer Sonia Friedman and her team. The story was almost there. The songs were exquisite. We'd even worked on a few rudimentary dance routines to give an idea of what audiences would see on stage. But then, I received a call to go to London and the Hat Trick offices. There I was told to remove my name from the show or it would not be made. Jimmy Mulville offered me £200,000 to do so. The money would have been incredibly useful as my other means of earning a living had largely disappeared. But in the end, I refused for many reasons, not the least of which was that I did not want the legacy of Father Ted to be built on the ruined bodies of gay, autistic, abused and gender-nonconforming children. Recently, my position in this debate has been vindicated by the findings of the #CassReport , which found that ‘trans healthcare’ in the UK has an inadequate evidence base, a toxic atmosphere within gender clinics that led to whistleblowers being vilified and smeared, and a rush to medicalize children without sufficient regard for the long-term consequences of such interventions. Once at a meeting, Sonia Friedman, said to me “You’re on the wrong side of history.” I never received an apology from her. I would still appreciate one. My beliefs—that biological sex is real and important, that women need single sex spaces for their safety and privacy, that their sports should be fair and finally that children should not be subjected to experimental medical protocols—are specifically protected in British law. Furthermore, polling shows that the same views are held by the majority of the British population. Mulville will not explain the problem he has with these views because he knows it will put him out of step with the majority of decent people in this country. For too long now, Mulville has been sitting on a musical that would be a surefire hit. He is doing this for no other reason than to please the gender cultists on his staff and in the wider, captured media landscape. It’s pathetic, cruel and cowardly. If he doesn't want to make the show, he should get out of the way and let me do it. Please share this message with your networks and use the hashtag #FreeFatherTed when you can. While it might not result in the return of my work, it will certainly make it more challenging for Mulville (and Friedman) to pretend they had nothing to do with a disgraceful act of preemptive cultural vandalism.

Internet pals! With gender ideology being exposed as a load of old bollocks, there is no better time to buy my memoir 'Tough Crowd'! Come for tales about creating comedies such as 'Father Ted' & 'The IT Crowd', stay for my battle against some of the worst people on Twitter! #GlinnerWasRight

🎉🌼🌸April Fools! 🌸🌼🎉 Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren't women at all, but men, every last one of them. In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls. The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women's and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex. For several years now, Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable. The re-definition of 'woman' to include every man who declares himself one has already had serious consequences for women's and girls’ rights and safety in Scotland, with the strongest impact felt, as ever, by the most vulnerable, including female prisoners and rape survivors. It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man. Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal. I'm currently out of the country, but if what I've written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment. If you agree with the views set out in this tweet, please retweet it. #ArrestMe #AprilFools #HateCrimeActScotland 11/X

@holland_tom he's holding the discus wrong

Shocking lapels

@jaglancy That looks fantastic

Behind the Scenes filming in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 I’m looking forward to the London premiere on Monday.

Israel—and America—Have No Choice but to Act | The Free Press thefp.com/p/israel-and-a…

"The BBC’s deep-rooted prejudice is fuelling the poison of anti-Semitism," writes @DannyCohen telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/2…

@MichaelWarbur17 Great picture - exactly where I get off to go to my office, just next to the Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street

The great thing about reality is it's still there whether you accept it or not. It's your right to deny it of course, but you'll look a bit mental.

ANDREW NEIL: Why I'm proud to be join JK Rowling in the gender wars mol.im/a/12362329 via @MailOnline

@DAaronovitch @mrianleslie There is no but. The CEO of a bank should not discuss the private affairs of a client with a journalist. Ever

@mrianleslie Yes, but. The ‘but’ being that by the time she did it Farage had already got his version of the story out and splashed everywhere

Whoa

@MikeMoranMBE That is very, very cool Mike !

At Shelsley Walsh Classic today, I will be on the hill climb later today in a works Mini Cooper which came second in the 1967 Flowers Rally in San Remo, Italy, driven by Paddy Hopkirk. The mini is now owned by John McIntosh, a lifelong friend!

@StephenJardine A lovely tribute to a real gent

Rae Stewart - A life well lived but too short. scotsman.com/news/opinion/c…

@StephenJardine Such a witty and charming man, a fitting tribute

Such a lovely tribute to Rae Stewart. “He was loved and admired and helped patent the design for life as a good man”news.stv.tv/scotland/rae-s…