I sat there scrolling through Instagram on a warm July evening, the sort of evening when you expect nothing more taxing than deciding what to have for tea, and there it was. Nick Cope, the familiar face from CBeebies, had posted that he was cancelling his scheduled family show at the Tivoli Theatre in Wimborne. The reason, buried in the polite wording, was simple enough. The venue had hosted Katie Hopkins just days earlier.
I have to admit my first reaction was a weary sigh. Not at Hopkins. At the predictable choreography of it all. Here was a children's presenter, a man whose day job involves singing songs and reading stories to toddlers on the BBC, deciding that sharing a stage (not even the same day, mind you) with a woman who says things he disagrees with was somehow untenable. The announcement came on 4 July. The Telegraph picked up the story a week later.
The Tivoli had not only put on Hopkins. It has hosted her more than once. That seems to have been enough. Cope's decision drew cheers from anti-racism campaigners, the usual chorus that frames any pushback against their worldview as a moral triumph. Others were less impressed. They called it virtue-signalling, the latest dreary example of left-wing McCarthyism dressed up as conscience.
The pattern that refuses to stay quiet
This is not some isolated bout of artistic sensitivity. Hopkins has spent 2025 and 2026 watching venues in places like Rugby and Leicester buckle under pressure. Safety concerns, they say. Protests. The familiar script. Book the controversial act, watch the activist machine crank into gear, then fold. Each time the justification is the same: we cannot platform hate. Each time the effect is the same: fewer people get to hear the woman speak, and audiences lose the chance to make up their own minds.
I found myself wondering, as I read the details, what exactly a CBeebies presenter thinks he is protecting by refusing to tread the same boards Hopkins stood on. The children who might have come to his show? Their parents? Or simply his own standing among the right sort of people? The theatre itself seems to have taken a different view, quietly getting on with booking a range of acts. That used to be called having a broad programme. Now it is treated as provocation.
There is something almost comic about the escalation. A former Apprentice contestant turned commentator says things that upset progressive sensibilities, and suddenly family entertainers are drawing lines in the sand. The irony is not lost on those watching from outside the bubble. Hopkins keeps turning up, keeps selling tickets, keeps arguing that audiences should decide for themselves. The cancellations keep coming. And each one chips away at the idea that British cultural spaces can tolerate disagreement without someone taking their ball home.
