“Don’t tell me I’m still on that feckin’ island”: Migration, Masculinity, British Television and Irish Popular Culture in the Work of Graham Linehan, Dr Marcus Free (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick)

This paper examines how, through such means as interviews and DVD commentaries, television situation comedy writer Graham Linehan has discursively elaborated a distinctly migrant masculine identity as an Irish writer in London. It highlights his stress on how the working environment of British broadcasting and the tutelage of senior British broadcasters facilitated the satirical vision of Ireland in Father Ted. It focuses on the gendering of his narrative of becoming in London and how his suggestion of interplays between specific autobiographical details and his dramatic work have fuelled his public profile as a migrant Irish writer.

Dr Marcus Free completed his BA and PhD at Dublin City University, and has taught previously at the Universities of Sunderland and Wolverhampton. He currently teaches Film and Television Studies on the BA Liberal Arts and on a variety of modules on the MA Media Studies programme, including ‘Critical Issues in Media Theory’, 'Media, Sport and Popular Culture’, ‘Research Methods’ and ‘Television Drama: Industry, Form and Audience’. His current research interests are in gender, identity, sport and the body in popular culture; psychoanalytic perspectives on sport and sport fandom; representations of gender, sport, race and national identity in film, television and print media; Irish migration and national identity in media and popular culture; and the role of media consumption in the construction of autobiographical memory and narrative.

Free, M. (2015). '“Don’t tell me I’m still on that feckin’ island”: Migration, Masculinity, British Television and Irish Popular Culture in the Work of Graham Linehan’, Critical Studies in Television,Volume 10: 2. 4-20.