Dame Maureen Lipman Hires Bodyguard After Pro-Palestinian Campaigners Protest Her Aberdeen Show With Altered Poster

Dame Maureen Lipman hired a personal bodyguard named Mark for her current stage production after pro-Palestinian campaigners in Aberdeen attempted to have the show cancelled. The 80-year-old actress is performing Allegra at His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen. She stated she is forced by government inaction on antisemitism to hire security for the tour.

Mark protects her and brings her a flat white and a flapjack when she cannot exit via the stage door. Dame Maureen described the campaigners as bigots and dismissed the altered promotional poster as that dopey old trope again. The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign shared an image on social media that added devil horns and a pitchfork to her likeness.

The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign claimed Dame Maureen Lipman had a long record of harmful statements about Muslims, Palestinians and Palestinian rights. The Campaign Against Antisemitism condemned the depiction as a longstanding antisemitic trope.

Dame Maureen's husband David explained that the Hebrew word keren translates as both horns and radiance or halo, and that medieval artists adopted a mistranslation in portrayals of Jewish people.

Timothy Lovat, chairman of the Jewish Council of Scotland, lodged a formal complaint with police regarding the altered poster. He met with Police Scotland Chief Constable Jo Farrell last week. Police Scotland informed him that the content did not reach the threshold required for a hate crime prosecution and classified the image as a non-crime hate incident.

Timothy Lovat stated: I don't understand what a non-crime hate incident is. If it is a hate incident, then in my humble opinion it should be a crime. Scotland's hate crime legislation created offences for stirring up hatred through the communication of threatening or abusive material intended to incite hatred against particular groups.

Nearly 80 members of the House of Lords wrote to Sir Keir Starmer last month arguing that permitting the demonisation of Israel had fostered conditions conducive to antisemitism across Britain. The peers described the frequency of attacks on Jewish people in the UK as a profound failure by the state.

A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman stated the horrific rise of antisemitism and anti-Jewish hatred in Britain and across the world is intolerable, and we will not rest until Britain is a place where every Jewish person can live openly, safely and proudly.

The UK government has invested £58 million in protective security funding for Jewish communities.