Russell T Davies is a man who prefers to look on the bright side. That time he was gay-bashed by a gang of bus conductors? “People have been beaten up far worse than me, that was just a bit of a thumping in the street.” When the production schedule of his dystopian drama Years and Years forced him back to work within days of his husband’s death? “Writing was a nice escape.” Even a story about his “tough” father branding him “yesterday’s man” after his initial departure as showrunner on Doctor Who concludes with a cheerful: “I knew I wasn’t.” It’s easy to see how he’s earned a reputation as the most affable man in TV, if not the world. So why has he taken to keeping a kitchen knife by his front door, “ready to use”?
“I’m called a paedophile and a groomer online by people like [Father Ted creator and anti-trans activist] Graham Linehan, and now people believe what they read. People believe it when they’re told the Earth is flat,” he says. His support for trans rights has resulted in years of death threats and “groomer” smears, which he used to brush off. “But the online world is becoming the real world. People have worked out my address, and one person turned up at my house. If you believe a paedophile lives here, it’s not the maddest thing in the world to come and get me. I’ve been saying for years that our rights are paper-thin, and here we are. What scares me is that I can’t see an end to it. Nothing is going to unseat these tech barons – it will require some sort of revolution to stop them. So for the first time in history, hatred is being monetised by an algorithm.”
