In 1999, Russell T Davies wrote a scene so provocative that the Daily Mail declared the nation "hell-bent on destruction." Queer As Folk, his drama about three gay men living and loving in Manchester, had dared to show ordinary queer life without apology, and Britain, or at least its tabloids, recoiled. A quarter of a century later, Davies is still being called dangerous, but the accusation now arrives not from newspaper columnists but from anonymous accounts, and the stakes, he says, have become frighteningly personal. Davies, 63, has long been known in television circles as unusually good-humoured, even about hardship.

He has described being attacked by a gang of bus conductors as "just a bit of a thumping," and returned to his writing desk days after his husband's death, calling the work "a nice escape." But his outspoken support for trans rights has brought a different kind of threat, one he cannot shrug off. Branded a "paedophile" and a "groomer" by critics including Father Ted creator Graham Linehan, he says the online abuse has begun spilling into his actual street in Manchester. "People have worked out my address, and one person turned up at my house," he says.

He now keeps a knife by the door, "ready to use." What troubles him most is not the insult itself but its machinery. "Nothing is going to unseat these tech barons," he says, describing a system in which outrage is not merely tolerated but profitable. Hatred, in his telling, has become a product optimised for engagement, amplified by algorithms with no interest in truth.

Asked whether he would still write Queer As Folk's most provocative storyline today, Davies does not hesitate.