Father Ted fans flock to 'craggy island' | Daily Mail Online Father Ted fans flock to 'craggy island' Last updated at 17:27 25 February 2007 Three hundred Father Ted fans descended on a small island off the west coast of Ireland today, donning white collars and habits to celebrate the comedy series. As surreal as any Father Ted episode, the small 11-kilometre long island, Inis Mor, suffered the invasion of hundreds of fans determined to party as hard as the notorious drink-swilling Father Jack. The bleak landscape of the largest of the Aran Islands was chosen as a fitting location for Craggy island for the three-day Friends of Ted event from February 23-25th to mark the ninth anniversary of the death of comic Dermot Morgan, the star of the Channel 4 series. All politically correct notions were cast from the island as a bizarre array of themed events associated with the comedy got underway. On the bill were the Toilet Duck Comedy Awards, the Father Jack Cocktail Evening, A Song for Europe and the Lovely Girls Competition.

Michael Gill, 65, from Inis Mor, sat supping a pint of the black stuff at a pub in the village packed with clerics, alongside the lovely girls. "When you see all these nuns going around and they have the boyfriends with them, that would sort of put you thinking," he laughed. He said most religious folk nowadays would not mind the outfits. The ruins of a ninth century church can just be seen from the coastal road. Extra gardai were brought over the mainland to man the island where shouts of 'We are all going to Heaven' could be heard ringing out. As the Lovely Girls battled it out on the stage in the town hall, Dermot Morgan's son Ben said he was very proud of his famous father and delighted so many people had turned up. Not to be left out of the fancy dress Rock-a-Hula, the 13-year-old, who was accompanied by his mother Fiona, dressed up in a Pope outfit his father had used for stand-up routines. "It is great, so many people. My favourite was the Toilet Duck award," he said. "I do adds on the radio, straight scripts. I'd love to do comedy.

I like watching people laugh." Lovely girl winner, Agnes from Limerick, who wowed the judges with her blue flower patterned dress, said: "I want to thank you for all the prayers that did it. I feel better than the Rose of Tralee." Another to snap up one of the 100 prized tickets for the festival, Thomas Fortune, 25, from Kilkenny, struck a realistic Father Jack armed with a pistol and a bottle of booze. "This festival - three days drinking on an island - where can you go wrong? We are definitely enjoying it," he said. Eithne Gillooly, from Inis Mor, who was dressed as tea-pushing Mrs Doyle, said: "It has been all go I have been run off my feet making tea. It has been a great boost for the island, it is fantastic as at this time of year." Father Ted (TV Series 1995–1998) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends.

Error Crazy sitcom about 3 priests and their housekeeper who live on Craggy Island, not the peaceful and quiet part of Ireland it seems! Stars: A local milkman seeks revenge after Father Ted gets him fired. 9.3 After losing a bet to Father Dick Byrne, Father Ted has to kick Bishop Brennan up the backside. 9.2 Father Ted holds a, "Celebration Of Craggy Island's Ethnic Diversity", party to prove he's not a racist. 9.0 Check out India Spotlight Related News a list of 45 titles created 10 Apr 2013 a list of 48 titles created 14 Apr 2013 a list of 32 titles created 02 Feb 2014 a list of 34 titles created 26 Dec 2014 a list of 38 titles created 8 months ago Search for " Father Ted " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Title: Father Ted (1995–1998) 8.6/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin.

15 wins & 4 nominations. See more awards » Photos Hotel owner Basil Fawlty's incompetence, short fuse, and arrogance form a combination that ensures accidents and trouble are never far away. Stars: John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs Stuck in the middle of World War I, Captain Edmund Blackadder does his best to escape the banality of the war. Stars: Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Stephen Fry In the Regency era, Mr E. Blackadder serves as butler to the foppish numskull Prince George amidst the fads and crazes of the time. Stars: Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Hugh Laurie In the Tudor court of Elizabeth I, Lord Edmund Blackadder strives to win Her Majesty's favour while attempting to avoid a grisly fate should he offend her. Stars: Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Tim McInnerny Alan Partridge a failed television presenter whose previous exploits had featured in the chat-show parody Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, and who is now presenting a programed on local radio in Norwich.

Stars: Steve Coogan, Phil Cornwell, Simon Greenall Red Dwarf (TV Series 1988) Comedy | Sci-Fi The adventures of the last human alive and his friends, stranded three million years into deep space on the mining ship Red Dwarf. Stars: Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules Bernard Black runs his own bookshop even though he doesn't much like people who buy books and hates having customers. Next door to Bernard's shop is the Nifty Gifty gift shop run by Fran, ... See full summary » Stars: Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Tamsin Greig Classic comedy following the misadventures of two Wheeler Dealer brothers Del Boy and Rodney Trotter who scrape their living by selling dodgy goods believing that next year they will be millionaires. Stars: David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Roger Lloyd Pack Follows four friends and their antics during their final years of school. Stars: Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison The comedic adventures of a rag-tag group of technical support workers at a large corporation. Stars: Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson Controversal spoof of current-affairs TV and the role of celebrity in the UK.

Stars: Christopher Morris, Mark Heap, Kevin Eldon In the Middle Ages, Prince Edmund the Black Adder constantly schemes and endeavors to seize the crown from his father and brother. Stars: Rowan Atkinson, Brian Blessed, Elspet Gray Edit Storyline Have mercy on poor Father Ted Crilly. He has so much to contend with when it comes to dealing with the folks of Craggy Island, Ireland. There's Father Dougal McGuire, who is as dimwitted as they come; and then there is Father Jack Hackett who lives for the simple pleasures of life (sleeping, drinking, and swearing). Ted tries to bring stability to his congregation as well as the surreal townspeople of Craggy Island. Written by Pat McCurry <ccgrad97@aol.com> 21 April 1995 (UK) See more » Also Known As: Did You Know? Trivia The character of Mrs Doyle is based on the mother of writer Graham Linehan . See more » Goofs Some of the bunnies in "The Plague" are motionless stuffed bunnies.

See more » Quotes See more » Crazy Credits The sixth episode of the second season begins with the usual credits, but instead of Father Ted, the title reads: Father Ben. It then cuts to Dougal sitting in front of the TV, watching Father Ben. Ted comes in and makes fun of the character of Father Ben, saying he has no self-awareness at all. It then cuts to the normal credits. See more » Connections This show might offend some Catholics but not me, I loved It 8 February 2002 | by (sylviastel@aol.com) (United States) – See all my reviews I have to say that I was surprised at my amazement of enjoying this Irish comedy. Sadly, the actor played Father Ted died in 1998. But he left us with lots of laughter and unforgettable scenes. It used to be shown on WLIW and they began putting warnings before the show. Then, it may have gotten a little too offensive for a New York Catholic audience. But despite everything, it is a classic comedic series. You'll laugh more than be offended. Maybe a few people in the television audience might answer their true callings of priesthood and sisterhood. We need more religious people.

Maybe in a way, Father Ted shows a fun side of priest life without the stuffiness associated with it. Priests can and do have fun. They're even hysterical to watch over and over again. You can't forget the wonderful Mrs. Doyle as the bit crazed housekeeper to the priests. Don't miss the Lent episode and Father Stone episode. They are just too funny to miss up this show's offer. 33 of 37 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Battle to be 'the real Craggy Island' twists and turns like a Father Ted plot | Television & radio | The Guardian Battle to be 'the real Craggy Island' twists and turns like a Father Ted plot Residents urged to settle their dispute with five-a-side contest Saturday 27 January 2007 07.17 EST First published on Saturday 27 January 2007 07.17 EST Close This article is 9 years old There is no dispute on the Aran islands, a cluster of three rocky outcrops off the west coast of Ireland, that they are the spiritual home to another trinity - that of the feckless priests Fathers Ted, Dougal and Jack. But which of the three can claim to be Craggy Island, the setting and inspiration for the successful Channel 4 series which until last week came to life only in screen repeats, is now the subject of an unholy row.

Since the dispute between Inis Oirr (population 250) and Inis Mor (population 1,200) came to light earlier this week, the altogether more surreal comedy from the series - which ended nine years ago and ran to a mere 24 episodes - has taken on a life of its own. An online announcement this month that a Friends of Ted festival will be held on one of the Aran islands revealed a huge international fanbase. The website received more than 700,000 hits in one day and then crashed. Every ticket has been sold. But the three-day event, to be staged on Inis Mor, prompted inhabitants of Inis Oirr to claim kinship with the genuine Craggy Island. The dispute has triggered a battle for tourist revenues and a quest for authenticity pursued through film clips. The story unfolding on the Aran islands is as convoluted as one of Father Ted's plot lines. The residents have been urged to settle their dispute in the best traditions of Father Ted . With a five-a-side football match. But contrary to one episode of the show, it is unlikely to be an All Priests Over-75s Five-a-Side Football Championship.

There has always been a healthy rivalry, says Daithi O'Brian, barman in Flaherty's, one of the three pubs on Inis Oirr. The most eagerly contested events in the annual sports days are three-man rowing races in curraghs, traditional fishing boats. Inis Oirr beat Inis Mor last year. Mr O'Brian is adamant that Inis Oirr, at two miles by two miles the smallest of the Aran islands, is home to Craggy Island. "Inis Mor gets a lot more visitors, all year round," he said. "It has no claim on the title at all. The opening credits were filmed here. It would be good for us to get extra tourists." "Visitors looking for Craggy Island always go out to the shipwreck," explained Anthony Keane, referring to the rusting coaster seen in the opening shots of Father Ted, which feature a vessel driven ashore by gales in 1960. "I've never seen it on Inis Mor. The festival ought to be here." The sprightly 82-year-old, a lifelong resident of Inis Oirr, should know.

He was present the day the Plassey's 11-strong crew was winched ashore through breaking waves. "A few bottles of whiskey came to us before the customs took the rest," he recalled. Meanwhile on Inis Mor, Peter Phillips, a Welsh-based film producer, has been busy all week preparing the ground for the Friends of Ted festival. He and an Irish colleague, Fergal McGrath, dreamed up the project while attending an Elvis impersonation competition "First of all we needed a Craggy Island," he explained. "We narrowed it down to three islands: Achill, Inisboffin and Inis Mor. We were made particularly welcome here and were persuaded there was enough accommodation. "The money raised is going to a West of Ireland heart foundation. It's appropriate because Dermot Morgan [who played Father Ted] died of a heart attack." The festival, scheduled for the weekend of February 23-25, also marks the ninth anniversary of his death. "The row over Inis Oirr is nothing more than a storm in one of Mrs Doyle's teacups," Mr Phillips maintained. Mrs Doyle - the housekeeper, played by Pauline McLynn - was always proffering refreshments.

"We are going to have a five-a-side football match to decide the issue. The winner will be known as Craggy Island and the loser as Rugged Island [home, in the series, to a rival triumvirate of dastardly priests]." There is already talk of celebrity backing, possibly with Jackie Charlton, a former Ireland manager, and disgraced banker Nick Leeson, promoter of Galway City, helping to train the teams. Inis Mor's residents have embraced the opportunity. The secondary school will perform Father Ted sketches in Irish. Locals will also restage a Father Ted pantomime they devised How do the priests on Inis Mor and Inis Oirr feel about the row? And perhaps more importantly, do they bear any resemblance to their TV counterparts? Father Ciaran Blake, 44, is newly arrived. "When I left my last parish to come to Inis Mor, I was given a boxed set of Father Ted tapes," he admitted.

"There are characters in the church similar to those, but not quite as mad." Father Ted, scripted by two Irish writers, Arthur Matthews and Graham Linehan, began in 1995 at a time when deference to the Catholic hierarchy was collapsing under the weight of successive abuse scandals. But RTE, the Irish state broadcaster, did not broadcast it. On Inis Oirr, Father Joe Jennings, 62, is a keen fisherman; his television preference is for Fawlty Towers. "If the festival is an excuse for a few days' party, that's fine," he said. "When I go to Dublin, people say: 'Here's the man from Craggy Island'. "But what's curious is that Arthur Matthews went to school in Dublin. I presume the characters are based on people he met there." Father Ted Filming Locations - Find That Location Father Ted Filming Locations Award-winning sitcom about three priests on a small Irish island. Series: 0:15 Title of section 2 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Iusto, optio, dolorum provident rerum aut hic quasi placeat iure tempora laudantium ipsa ad debitis unde?

0:35 Title of section 3 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Excepturi, obcaecati, quisquam id molestias eaque asperiores voluptatibus cupiditate error assumenda delectus odit similique earum voluptatem doloremque dolorem ipsam quae rerum quis. Odit, itaque, deserunt corporis vero ipsum nisi eius odio natus ullam provident pariatur temporibus quia eos repellat consequuntur perferendis enim amet quae quasi repudiandae sed quod veniam dolore possimus rem voluptatum eveniet eligendi quis fugiat aliquam sunt similique aut adipisci. 0:45 Title of section 4 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Iusto, optio, dolorum provident rerum aut hic quasi placeat iure tempora laudantium ipsa ad debitis unde? Iste voluptatibus minus veritatis qui ut. Craggy Island | Father Ted Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia The fictional Craggy Island was the primary setting for the Father Ted .

Description Craggy Island is ostensibly, a bleak, desolate community with no redeeming features whatsoever and where nothing ever happens, populated by various lunatics, a small Chinese community and one Māori. The weather is often harsh and just about every house and business is shoddily built. As testament to the island's enduring unpopularity, the Irish state have given the British government permission to use the island's coast for dumping nuclear waste. The island isn't mentioned on any map and is frequently used by sailors as a navigational device (because, in the words of Father Ted Crilly, the general consensus is that, if you're heading away from the island, you're heading in the right direction). Despite there rarely being any news of note, the island has its own broadsheet, called The Craggy Island Examiner . Because they never have anything worth writing about, the staff usually blow up any small event or piece of gossip into a major scandal, such as when a peeping tom's whistle was stolen. The 'story' helped make way for a full-colour pullout on whistles as a way of exploiting the bored locals' excitement (one resident even remarked that Craggy Island was becoming like [Boyz n the Hood]).

However, Ted was once seen reading an edition with the alarming headline: "Crazed Murderer Still on the Loose"; it was implied in the episode that this person may be Tom, an insane man who persistently observes the coast wearing his "I Shot J.R." t-shirt, usually while sporting a gun. A bizarre fact about the island is that in poor weather conditions the roads are "taken in" and stored in a warehouse. The only remotely modern places on the island are an Internet café, a cinema, a lighthouse, an isolation tank, an aviary, a greyhound racing track, and a golf course, although the latter consists only of a small strip of concrete and a windmill. One scene in the Christmas special depicts the downtown as having multi-storey buildings and a developed commercial district with well established businesses such as McDonald's. There are also several significantly unimpressive landmarks (see below), such as "The Field". The island has a long-running feud with its almost identical counterpart, Rugged Island , which is ministered to by Ted's arch nemesis, Dick Byrne . The island apparently gets a fair amount of snowfall.

Father Ted notes in Grant Unto Him Eternal Rest that it is snowing again and the snowfall depicted in the episode is considerable. He also assumes that it's snowing all over the island. Wildlife Craggy island posseses many interesting creatures, many are unique variants of their mainland counterparts. Given the harshness of life on craggy island, many are aggressive And troublesome. Giant crows: Bigger than their mainland counterparts, they also have a unique tendency to make their nests using glasses, and also sometimes hunt humans in large numbers. Ants: craggy island is apparently overrun with big, red ants. Dougal s desire to point out their return to father ted suggests that they are dangerous. Rabbits: The rabbits on craggy island are drawn to father Jack Hackett, and appear in huge swarms. Super intelligent hamsters: Father dougal Maguire had one that could ride a bike. Other, less notable forms of fauna are sheep, horse's, goats, cats, a spider in a pram, Rottweilers, typical stuff.

Places of note The Holy Stone of Clonrichert The Holy Stone of Clonrichert : Formerly at Fermanagh but moved to Craggy Island (as it was not doing very good business) the holy stone is the main attraction of the island following its upgrade to a Class II Relic after someone was lured there (which Dougal and possibly the Church mistook for 'Cured'), coupled with the case of an Englishman growing a beard when he touched it. It was briefly removed following an altercation between Father Jack and a Bishop, where Jack presumebley assaulted the Bishop with the relic and lodged it into the Bishop's anus. The filming location providing a backdrop for the holy stone was the Cliffs of Moher , one of Ireland's most popular tourist destinations. (" Tentacles of Doom ") Ted admits to not knowing why the stone is holy and claims it is just a kind of general holiness that supposedly gave Dougal of moment of serenity which Dougal himself described as "a great buzz". The Field : While not actually a field, the area has fewer rocks in it than most other places on the island.

The field also hosts Fun Land, a yearly carnival sporting unimpressive 'rides' such as Freak Pointing, The Whirly Go Round, The Pool of Terror, The Crane of Death (Apparently called-so because the year before a young man died while he was on it), Goading the Fierce Man, Duck Startling, The Spinning Cat (watching a fake cat which had been attached to a record player spin around) and The Ladder, the last simply being a ladder propped against a wall. It was filmed in Portrane, Co. Dublin. The Craggy Island Crazy Golf Course : The course consisted of one hole with the easily discarded obstacle of a windmill. (" Entertaining Father Stone ") The Picnic Spot : Even bleaker than other parts on the island, the picnic spot is home to a few deckchairs, a sign, and a list of rules, which includes no swearing. The spot is watched by Mr. Benson and his whistle. Its only regular visitors are an aggressively territorial couple who drive away anyone else wishing to sit at the lone picnic table.

They do, however, abide by the 'no swearing' rule religiously, telling Father Ted to 'fup off' and calling him a 'backstard', 'grasshole' and 'pedrophile'. ( Old Grey Whistle Theft ) Vaughans : A pub located in town that is visited by many of Craggy Island's Chinese residents. ( Are You Right There, Father Ted? ) O'Leary's : Another pub. The threshold of this pub is the site of the mysterious Mud Angel. Legend had it that every Friday night, about closing time, the mysterious figure of a man appeared in the mud outside the pub. It was later revealed to be one of Father Jack's various drunken antics, rolling in the mud in a drunken stupor. O'Leary's : A small shop, which provides services ranging from groceries to book-makers to record sales. It is run by John and Mary O' Leary who are regularly involved in domestic violence moments before the priests enter the shop, only to portray the picture of marital bliss when in public.

The shop went through various forms throughout the series though this may be the result of the O'Leary's redecorating the shop or it may be that they moved to a new premises. Magic Road : The Magic Road was seen or mentioned only in the episode Hell. When Ted and Dougal were on holidays taking about the places of interest they can go to and according to Ted is where the normal laws of gravity have no meaning, as they mentioned the Magic Road it showed Father Jack Hacket at the bottom of the road rolling up the slope. The "real" Craggy Island: The real Craggy Island seen from helicopter shots is Inisheer. The actual parochial house used in the series is on the mainland in County Clare, near Carron , in the Burren. Vaughan's pub, where Ted is confronted by a crowd of angry Chinese in " Are You Right There, Father Ted? ", is also located in Kilfenora. The football match at Ted Fest is used to award the honorary title of Craggy Island to the winning team.

Notes from a Craggy Island: The Father Ted Festival | The Independent Features Notes from a Craggy Island: The Father Ted Festival Ten years, and a million DVDs since his demise, Father Ted has spawned a fully-fledged cult. John Walsh slips on his dog collar and joins the faithful Tuesday 4 March 2008 00:00 BST Click to follow Notes from a Craggy Island: The Father Ted Festival 1/24 Julien Behal/PA 24/24 I think it was the moment when a sardine sandwich, flung by a chap in a Pink Panther suit, went whizzing past my ear, and a furry gorilla flew through the air and cannoned into Joe the MC, that I finally grasped the long-term ramifications a television show can produce in our me-too culture. It was hard, mind you, trying to follow a serious train of thought when, onstage before me, a whole line of Lovely Girls were doing their final, virginal twirl before an audience of yelling, whistling and over-stimulated priests, nuns, bishops, housekeepers, Elvis impersonators, milkmen, hairy babies, monks and giant rabbits.

I'm not sure the island of Inishmore has seen anything like it. But, for a few hundred deranged fans, this isn't Inishmore. It's Craggy Island and, though it started life as a fictional location, it's as real to them as their bricks-and-mortar homes in Dublin, London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Ottawa and Tokyo. Perhaps I should explain. I was in the west of Ireland, attending TedFest II, the second celebration of Father Ted, a TV sitcom that filmed its final instalment 10 years ago. The show, written by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, ran on Channel 4 for three series (plus one extended Christmas Special, set in the lingerie section of a department store) between April 1995 and May 1998; it was popular at the time, but, thanks to frequent repeats, acquired a massive following after its demise; more than 1 million DVD box sets have been sold. A year ago, Welsh film-maker Peter Phillips met Irish film editor Fergal McGrath in Sri Lanka on a children's therapy project.

The former had set up the successful Elvis Festival in Porthcawl, and the two men discussed doing the same for Father Ted. "We didn't want it to be a TV-watching festival," says Phillips. "We wanted to create Craggy Island with a few like-minded people." The Friends of Father Ted festival was born, in a storm of drink, fancy dress and sporting events. This year's marked a poignant anniversary. The star, Dermot Morgan, who played Ted, died 10 years ago last week: he suffered a fatal heart attack the day after they filmed the final episode. It was spookily well-timed. No further series had been planned, nor could any be planned now, since no one could take Morgan's place.

It's easy to see why the sitcom became so cultish: viewers feel they could, without much trouble, step inside the action, visit the "parochial house" on Craggy Island and meet the inhabitants: Father Ted Crilly, genial, 40-ish, grey-haired and ambitious who, behind his worldly demeanour, lies and schemes like Sergeant Bilko; Father Dougal McGuire (played by Ardal O'Hanlon), a wide-eyed, 20-something halfwit in a variety of knitted jumpers who fails to grasp basic facts about the world ("This cow," Ted tells him, holding up a plastic toy, "is small. Those cows [real ones, seen through a window, grazing in the distance] are far away"); and Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly,) red-faced, wild-haired, catatonic, drool-stained, voraciously alcoholic and foul-mouthed; "Drink!", "Arse!", "Feck!", "Girls!" constitute almost his whole conversational repertoire. Then there's their housekeeper is Mrs Doyle (Pauline McLynn,) a middle-aged, much-exploited slattern with a large mole on her lip.

Psychotically hospitable, she regales priests and visitors with gallons of tea, hills of sandwiches and mountain ranges of cake, which she urges them to consume with cries of "Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on..." We learn that they've been sent to the island, out of harm's way, after a number of scandals involving money, nuns and unspeakable damage. They're never seen performing religious duties but while away the hours plotting to win the All-Priests' Stars in Their Eyes Lookalike Competition, or fending off the irruptions of unpleasant strangers to their peaceful home, whether stroppy women rock stars (a wounding dig at Sinead O'Connor), sinister oddball clerics, or the ghastly pop star Eoin McLove. Theirs is a world of moth-eaten innocence and surreal anarchy. The only moral action they ever take is to picket a rude foreign film at the cinema, where they carry meek placards bearing the legends "Careful, Now" and "Down With This Type of Thing," thus making it the most popular film in Craggy Island's history.

TedFest II started last week with a gathering of fans in Kilfenora, Co Clare, where much of the show's external footage was shot, and climaxed on Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands. None of the action was shot on the Arans, but the opening credit sequence is an air-shot of Inisheer, the smallest of the three. Clear? Last year, Inisheer objected to Inishmore's giving itself airs as "the real Craggy Island", and they held a football match to decide who had the right to the title. Inishmore won. The island's residents may wonder if this was the happiest outcome, as they watch revellers arrive by every ferry, and cram every B&B, hotel room, lodging-house digs or tent, transforming their bleak limestone citadel into the setting for the biggest, silliest and probably booziest fancy dress party in what's left of Christendom. **** My first sight on landing at Inishmore was a small scurrying figure on the quayside in a tweed jacket, woolly hat and apron, bearing a tray of teacups and cardboard egg sandwiches.

It was the first of several dozen Mrs Doyles (male and female) I was to see during the day. I fell into step beside Aisling, 23, a hazel-eyed beauty from Dublin pulling a builder's brick on a string leash. (Do keep up – Father Jack briefly adopts a brick in the episode "Speed 3" and makes it a pet.) Aisling recently graduated from Trinity in Politics and Sociology and drove across the country with two friends at 5am, fortified only by Buckfast Abbey Tonic Wine, the Dublin alkie's tipple. None had a ticket, but the security, she says, is "a pile of shite because, if you're in a costume, nobody checks". The girls had a brilliant time last year.

Their ambitions are "to have a few drinks and a laugh and maybe hop up on a priest." In Paitin (ie Poteen, or Irish moonshine) Jack's Bar at the Ostan Arann, the only hotel on Inishmore, a handsome, three-star establishment run by PJ O'Flaherty in a dog-collar, the Bishop from the ferry is on his second Guinness, talking to a small boy with a dog; the kid is weighed down a by a huge cross around his neck, as heavy as an albatross. Aisling and her friends are at a table with a Pat Mustard, one of several incarnations of the lecherous milkman who, in the show, has sex with all the Craggy Island housewives and sends Mrs Doyle into a delirium of flirtatiousness. He is hairy, ear-ringed, has a chain round his neck; he has single-handedly populated the island with hairy babies. I worry about Aisling. Will her innate virtue be eroded by an excess of Buckfast Tonic, or an excess of Mustard? The bar fills up with nuns.

They come in all configurations, but seem startlingly young to be fans of a show that packed up a decade ago. Marie and Bernadette are twin sisters, aged 23, from Limerick; they're here with their neighbour and friend Sarah, 25. "We just love the pro-gramme," said Marie. "We know all the lines. Give us any line from the three series, we'll tell you where it's from." Not since the heyday of Monty Python have so many people memorised the lines of comic sketches. "I'm surprised people get the humour," said Bernadette. "It seems very Irish to me." "Sometimes, for Irish people," said Marie, "it's like watching a documentary." They explained that, for girls at TedFest, the choice is to dress as Mrs Doyle, a nun or a Lovely Girl. Bernadette bought their costumes from a shop in Camden, north London. There had, she explained, been some saucy, mini-nuns' outfits, "but," she said, "I'm bein' quite blasphemous enough as it is without wearin' the tarty version." Blasphemous? Was she serious? Probably.

In an economically booming, successfully Europeanised, post-punt, post-emigrant and almost post-Catholic culture, this dressing-up as the clergy who ran the country in their parents' and grandparents' days is clearly a form of rebellion, but some vestigial guilt remains. "When she heard Dermot Morgan was dead," one girl told me, "me mam said, 'I'm not a bit surprised. That's what you get for cheekin' the priests.'" I can't hang around the bar, though, because the five-a-side football is under way near the harbour. At the pitch – a small, indescribably muddy field whose goals must have been bought in a toyshop – I'm surprised to discover the real-life Sicilian five-a-side footie team gracefully warming up. What are the Italians doing here? It's a piece of Irish logic. The Craggy Island World Cup, sponsored by Paddy Power, the bookies, is open to all "islands off the coast of Ireland". Teams have been fielded from two of the Arans, plus Clare Island, Tory Island, Rathlin Island, Inishbofin and a few others.

Then last month, Giovanni Trapattoni, the Italian football coach, signed up to become the Irish national team's manager, starting this May, and the Craggy Island organisers asked the island of Sicily – certainly "an island off the coast of Ireland", though it's 1472 miles "off" – to send a five-a-side team.Which is why there are five well-groomed, wavy-haired (or fashionably shaven-headed) Italian Adonises on the muddy pitch alongside the hard men from Inisheer. Scores of nuns press forward for a better view of the Sicilians' thighs. (Even the man from BBC Sport Northern Ireland is in full habit.) The first Mrs Doyle from the jetty is there, re-doing her jammy smudge of lipstick, beside a dispirited chap in a gorilla suit. Italian macaroons are handed round as a gesture of friendship. Despite being 10/11 favourites, the Sicilians lose to the islandmen, 4-2 on a penalty shootout. Four games later, the final sees the host island, Inishmore, playing Inishbofin for World Cup glory. The commentator is hilarious.

"Inishbofin is playing into the – no wait, both teams are playing into the wind," he says. "The ball is cleared by No 4 there, the man with the highlights, obviously done at home by his cousin... The atmosphere is electric – like a hairdryer in the bath." When a goal is scored, a ragged cry goes up from the home supporters, outnumbered though they are by be-mitred bishops and hirsute milkmen. "I don't know how to say this," says the commentator, "but I just heard a nun behind me say 'Fookin' hell'..." Back at the hotel, I discover that I've been invited to be one of the judges at the Lovely Girls beauty contest this evening. I am stunned by the honour (and when I ring the children in London to tell them the news, a note of genuine respect enters their voices for perhaps the first time ever). In the bar I celebrate with a glass of Burgundy. The bar is crammed with lunching clergymen, red-faced monks and a contingent of Lovely Girls, chosen from local heats around the country. The girls drink gin and tonics, simper, flirt and take snaps of each other on their mobiles.

One explains how much she likes "the humour of the fancy dress, because it's so subtle. It just creeps up on you, and you see something and say, 'Oh God, yes.' Like Eileen there, with her fake arms." I'm mystified. What arms? What is she talking about? "Eileen," she says, "show John the arms, willya?" A sweet-faced teenager, at a table of friends, displays two fleshy plastic forearms, attached to her wrists. "I don't remember a Father Ted episode with fake arms," I say, stupidly. "When was that?" As one woman, the six girls take a collectively aghast deep breath; one clamps a horrified hand to her mouth. I have made the most appalling gaffe. (The fake arms feature, of course, in "Escape From Victory", when Ted cheats at a football match.) A history professor announcing at high table that he'd never heard of the Franco-Prussian War would have felt less of a fool and an imposter. Will I be thrown out on my ear? I retreat swiftly, to find the Sicilians surveying their lunch with distaste.

On Saturday afternoons, many Irish people lunch on "soup and a sambo" (ie sandwich); perhaps the nomenclature confuses the stylish Italians. Their steely manager sips a pint of Guinness and grimaces. Struggling through the mass of T-shirts saying, "Careful Now" and "I Love My Brick" and "It's A Priest Thing – You Wouldn't Understand", I discover Ken Robertson, head of communications at Paddy Power, the sponsors, who have shelled out £5,000 for the winner of the football, and a "significant" sum to get their name on the TedFest literature and T-shirts. "It's the bizarreness of the event that attracted us," he says. "We like to get involved in unusual sports. Two years ago, we held the biggest ever strip-poker event with 400 players at the Café Royal, and this year we're supporting the Bingham Cup, the gay rugby world cup, which will be the biggest sporting event held in Ireland this year. We're really getting behind it, excuse the pun." By the door, the glum Italians are leaving.

"Can we just say goodbye to the Sicilian team?" says Peter Philips, the organiser, "who lost the tournament but brought us some lovely cakes?" The departing players beam at the wild cheers this provokes. By teatime, the crowds have swelled even more, for an hour of Buckeroo Speed Dating, which involves silver-tongued men pressing their attentions on scornful young women, while loading a plastic donkey with buckets and ropes until it kicks them all off. In the bar, extra Lovely Girls have been drafted in for tonight's contest, by a Wild Card system. One is Lisa Smith, a dark-haired, hyperactive management consultant from Galway, with a fondness for "touch rugby." Around us the costumes are getting sillier. One man is dressed as a six-foot bottle of beer. One is dressed as Henry Sellers, a walk-on TV personality with a fondness for sherry in an early episode. There's a score of men in silver-grey Ted wigs.

People in rabbit heads wander past (Bishop Brennan suffers an infestation of rabbits at the parish house in "The Plague") and a very sensible-looking girl called Sarah, in pearls, pleated skirt and wimple says, "Sure, what else is there to do than be extremely silly sometimes?" Huge amounts of drink have been consumed since 11am, but nobody seems actually drunk; the lecherous Pat Mustards redouble their hairy seduction attempts over more Bulmers. Urgent canoodlings in the corridors suggest there may be a high incidence of priest-hopping before the evening is over. It occurs to me that few people have dressed up as the decrepit Father Jack – but I suppose it makes it harder to pull, when your shirt-front is covered in drool, vomit and dribble. What about the Mrs Doyles, in their aprons and picture hats? They seem, surprisingly, to be much in demand among the boys. There must be some atavistic (can it be Oedipal?) impulse in young Irishmen to part these decent, God-fearing, pinafored ladies from their foundation garments. I'm almost sure I felt a twinge myself, once or twice.

The climax of the weekend is the Lovely Girls beauty contest, in which nine prime examples of Irish womanhood are put through their paces in the island's small but glamorous dance-hall. Talent, everyone explains to me, is not the point. Nor are good looks. What's important is loveliness. My fellow judges, Ken and Maria, explain that we're judging "the concept of loveliness of a bygone age". This contest is a piss-take of the Rose of Tralee Festival, Ireland's hilariously old-fashioned beauty contest, whose entrants must display such things as moral rigour, respect for their parents and an interest in charitable works, as well as have an acceptable figure, in order to win. You can bet the Rose of Tralee girls have never faced such a howling mob of desperadoes as the Lovelies face tonight. One is dressed in a Pink Panther suit (the connection? There's a passing mention, in "Are You Right There, Father Ted?" of Kato, Peter Sellers's domestic manservant/assailant in the Pink Panther movies) and a two-man horse can be seen in the crowd.

The Limerick nuns are at the front, plus a slew of disruptive hardnuts dressed as sheep (uh-oh). We judges take our seats, to much barracking. The compère Joe Rooney (who played Dougal's disruptive young pal Father Damo in one episode) brings on the girls. One by one, they must walk, or sway, successfully around traffic cones to show off their lovely bottoms (I'm sorry, but the word "bottoms" is right there in the Rules) and talk about their dreams of domestic virtue and marital servitude. Madeleine, in a fetching green beret, explains that the women in the audience shouldn't be out tonight, but "at home, cooking supper for our husbands". If they had need of a job, it should be "doing the little drawings in a parish newsletter". Katie from Kilfenora, a brazen minx with dyed black hair, carries on a pottery hen, extracts plastic eggs and sends them flying over the first 10 rows. Lots of girls bring domestic props – scone-making mix, copies of The Irish Catholic, scrubbers, kitchen tools, holy water bottles – and cakes. One cake is shaped like a Toilet Duck.

One is a gigantic scone, from inside which Miss Belfast Lovely Girl – Bridie O'Reilly – extracts a woolly jumper. My heart is stolen away by the favourite, Miss Cork, a care worker called Tess Marnane, 21, and far too beautiful to be merely Lovely, who performed a charming feather-duster dance; but Miss Galway was also strongly favoured, because of her hand-knitted bloomers. You know Aran sweaters and their thick, white-ribbed material? She recommended Aran knickers as a corrective to the skimpy thong abominations in modern shops, and had brought along a pair, which she pulled on beneath her skirt, to roars from the crowd. "What's this little pocket at the front for?" asked the compere. "It's where I keep my rosary beads," said the girl. "Are they the kind that vibrate?" countered the wicked Mr Rooney. As a final test, the Lovely Girls were required to make sandwiches in a sudden-death play-off. Each was given a tray of white sliced bread, Kerrygold butter and a tin of sardines and the resulting sandwiches were minutely examined with magnifying glasses, tape measures, calibrated forceps.

One girl, disgusted by her efforts, hurled a slice of bread over her shoulder into the crowd. So did another. Soon they came hurtling back on to the stage, along with other, unrelated items of food, and soft toys... But this is where we came in. I'm not sure what the TedFest says about Irish culture, the preoccupations of the young, the role of the priesthood, or the desire of young men to dress up as rabbits. To some extent, it's the spectacle of modern Ireland unburdening itself of its excessively religious past and embracing a world of anarchy in which identities don't matter. Then again, it's a colossal fancy dress party, where total strangers can admire each other's efforts, and there's no host except a fictional priest impersonated by a charismatic, grey-haired actor who died 10 years ago. A deliciously bogus celebration of churchy virtue and old-fashioned decency, it's the closest thing I know to a pagan saturnalia. As Ted himself might have written on his placard: Up With This Type Of Thing.

More about: Father Ted | Father Ted Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Notably, only one of these nine episodes was from Series 1 (" Good Luck, Father Ted "). Ted Fest 2007 At the inaugural Ted Fest , " New Jack City " was voted best episode. Father Ted Night 2011 (Channel 4) Father Ted Night, broadcast New Years Day 2011 on Channel 4, names " Speed 3 " as the fans' favorite episode. " Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse " is named as the writers' favorite episode. Father Ted’s legacy, 20 years on: up with this sort of thing | Television & radio | The Guardian Father Ted Father Ted’s legacy, 20 years on: up with this sort of thing Put three priests and their tea lady on a remote Irish island and what do you get? One of TV’s most loved sitcoms.

The creators and cast of Father Ted explain how they put Craggy Island on the comedy map The cast of Father Ted, l to r: Ardal O’Hanlon (Father Dougal McGuire); Dermot Morgan (Father Ted Crilly); Frank Kelly (Father Jack Hackett); Pauline McLynn (Mrs Doyle). Photograph: Channel 4 Monday 20 April 2015 02.30 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 21 April 2015 06.18 EDT Share on Messenger Close Careful now.” “Down with this sort of thing.” Of all the additions to the lexicon of protest from the past 20 years, none punctures a pompous bubble quite as well as these two deathless slogans paraded (with some reluctance) by Fathers Ted Crilly and Dougal McGuire outside a 1995 screening of the salacious movie The Passion Of St Tibulus on Craggy Island , Ireland’s last bastion of morality. Ted and Dougal’s noble vigil failed – St Tibulus went on to be bigger than Jurassic Park – but their entreaties have since passed into the language on both sides of the Irish Sea.

You could see them on placards outside the Conservative party conference in Manchester in 2013, at last year’s Dublin water-pricing demonstrations, at the Pope’s visit to the UK and the student-fee protests. Irish football fans waved them at riot police in Poznan during Euro 2012. From the archive: Nancy Banks-Smith on the death of Dermot Morgan, 1998 Read more These and other multi-purpose coinages (example: “That money was just resting in my account”) are testament to the universal appeal and hidden perceptive qualities that made a comedy classic out of Father Ted, the first episode of which was transmitted by Channel 4 exactly 20 years ago this week . Proudly daft in its portrayal of three priests and their tea lady in exile on remote and often surreal Craggy Island, Ted somehow managed to be more truthful about Ireland than any documentary could be. The strange thing was, the British got it too. A Friday night sitcom had helped the neighbours truly understand, at long last, that they were not so different.

Pinterest “One thing I’m really proud of,” says co-writer Graham Linehan , “is that Ted replaced the old, hackneyed Irish joke with Irish humour, which is a very different thing.” The show’s success marked Irish comedy finally shaking off decades of cosiness; one Irish fan told Linehan that Father Ted was “our punk rock”. “I loved that. Before then there’d been no mirror that reflected Irish people and their sense of humour back to themselves. Irish TV, as represented by something like The Late, Late Show, was still in the 1950s.” “In Ireland, we’d always felt secondary to England,” adds Pauline McLynn , who played housekeeper Mrs Doyle and had worked with Ted star Dermot Morgan on Irish TV and radio. “Ted was a glorious roar for a completely Irish Ireland. I thank the Lord that it was made by an English company, because otherwise we just wouldn’t have been allowed even the mild swearing that we had .

It would have been utterly toothless.” In three series between 1995 and 1998, Father Ted became for Ireland what The Young Ones was to Britain, except that its point of departure was not the freaks of post-punk youth culture but the strangeness of Ireland’s most conservative and outwardly normal institution: the priesthood. Co-creator Arthur Mathews calls it “the mad loneliness of men without women”. In Ted, priests can be manic depressives, closet neo-Nazis, cat burglars, over-enthusiastic youth leaders (as played by an up-and-coming Graham Norton) or, like the monstrous Father Fintan Stack, sadists who play jungle music at 3am and are “worse than Hitler”. (Or, for that matter, they can be Brian Eno ). “The show isn’t really about priests,” explains Linehan. “It just uses the priesthood as a secret society for us to make up funny things.

It’s like the FBI in Twin Peaks – a big, mysterious network.” Some years after Father Ted ended, Linehan and Mathews ran into a real-life priest – always a sticky moment for the men who had portrayed Catholicism as a joke and the Vatican as an all-night disco party. Ted was intended to be crazy and absurd, they said. Nobody really thinks priest are like that. “Lads,” the cleric confided, “you don’t know the half of it.” Linehan and Mathews first met on the Irish music paper Hot Press in the late 80s, where Mathews was the art director (“fancy title … I was just sticking bits of paper together”) and Linehan wrote reviews. They discovered a shared musical taste and a similar sense of humour. Linehan had just left Dublin’s Catholic University School “and for the very first time people were listening to me”. “It was like he’d been released into the community,” says Mathews. “He was just very, very funny.

Graham was an enthusiast; I was the jaded one.” Pinterest The two began writing short sketches for their friends’ spoof U2 tribute band, The Joshua Trio – little scenes between the songs such as “the Birth of Bono at Christmas” or “Adam Clayton’s drug bust”. They briefly had their own sketch group, one of whose skits concerned the Irish famine. Another starred Mathews as a blathering priest called Father Ted. “Every time I wrote Ted in the early days, I’d hear Arthur’s voice,” says Linehan. “Ted was this very bland character who’d never curse except for saying a very quiet ‘feck’ to himself. That panic and turmoil under the surface defined Ted before we even started writing him. Years later, when we did, it was just like pressing ‘play’ on a tape recorder.” After Linehan moved to London in 1990 to write for the music monthly Select, Mathews followed him “for a couple of months” (he ended up living in Linehan’s flat for four years).

They wrote TV material for Alexei Sayle, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, created the closeted aristocrat Ralph and his gardener Ted for The Fast Show , and thought about making a fake documentary series called Irish Lives, with six episodes each featuring a different character. One would be the hapless priest Ted Crilly. “We thought mock documentaries would be cheap to make,” says Linehan, “and no channel would want a sitcom with Irish characters. But that’s exactly what Channel 4 said they did want: characters that you’d come back to, and grow to love.” Encouraged by producer Geoffrey Perkins, they began to concentrate on Crilly, and the possible secret lives of priests, embracing one of Rhys Jones’s pet theories about sitcoms: that the characters must be trapped. Otherwise, why would they hang out with people they hated? They hit upon the idea of Craggy Island as an actual, literal trap, a bleak Alcatraz for disgraced priests, with Ted marooned there. Mathews felt he was not up to playing the lead in a full series, so they auditioned the role.

They almost cast the actor Maurice O’Donoghue – who would later appear as Ted’s nemesis Father Dick Byrne on Craggy Island’s parallel-world counterpart, Rugged Island – before opting for Dermot Morgan, an experienced comic who had outgrown Irish TV. “Dermot helped us dive into deeper depths with Ted,” says Linehan. “Writing for him, we came up with Ted’s obsession with money, his fantasy of going to Vegas … We started to feel for him in a way that you can’t really feel for Dougal or Jack or Mrs Doyle. They’re foils who are only really there to torture Ted, but Ted’s very nearly a rounded human being.” From the endless physical assaults of Father Jack to the attentions of the tyrannical Bishop Len Brennan to Ted’s doomed love for the romantic novelist Polly Clarke – bestselling author of Bejewelled with Kisses – they piled on the torment. Once, after a particularly grim day of filming, a weary Morgan asked them: “What are you going to do to me next? Pour slurry on me?” This, Linehan admits, gave them the idea to write exactly that scene.

“It was absolutely freezing,” says Mathews, “and Dermot and Ardal weren’t expecting it. You can see the shock on their faces. We felt a bit bad about that.” Often the writers would break off from a script, shake their heads and simply mutter: “Poor Ted.” Pinterest For Ted’s perpetually bewildered associate Father Dougal McGuire, they drew on Stan Laurel and also, says Mathews, from Linehan’s own behaviour in moments of confusion. They had seen the Irish standup Ardal O’Hanlon performing Shakespeare and noticed the “weird, gormless” face that he could pull. “That was Dougal right there,” says Linehan. “He was just spot-on and he became our secret weapon. The show took off so quickly because Ardal was so instantly funny.” O’Hanlon added a little of his own kid sister and a third element – dogs. “Dougal had to be more than just stupid,” he explains. “He had to be otherworldly and very, very strange.

I saw Dougal as very doglike, very puppyish and lovable, and really loyal to Ted.” He wonders if they pushed it too far for the car journey scene in which Dougal actually sticks his head out of the window, tongue flapping in the wind like a happy labrador. If Craggy Island Parochial House was a dysfunctional family – with Ted the constantly thwarted dad, Dougal the empty-headed son and Father Jack Hackett the sozzled grandfather – then the mother figure is clearly Mrs Doyle, a martyr to her tea tray and based on Linehan’s own mother. “She’s every older Irish woman,” says McLynn, “although in the course of the show I discovered that she’s also every single auntie and grandmother in the world. They’re feeders. They’re endlessly helpful in a completely useless way. They’re the sort of women who’d insist you had a brandy at 11 in the morning.” Of all the characters in Ted, Mrs Doyle is perhaps the most universal – most of us have an auntie who would greet the risen Christ himself with a cup of tea and a pyramid of sandwiches, the ghost of rationing whispering in her ear.

“That might be the only thing that dates Father Ted,” McLynn admits. “Older women today don’t have that same personal anxiety of making sure everyone’s fed. In every other respect it exists in its own timeless little world.” Pinterest The sense of removal from the real world was completed by a title sequence that showed soulful helicopter shots of the Irish landscape accompanied by Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy’s lachrymose Songs of Love . (Punchline: the helicopter crashes into the Parochial House.) The writers had preferred a more boisterous, sitcom-y Hannon composition that later became A Woman of the World , but producer Perkins insisted on a less mocking, more overtly Irish tune. Hannon recorded it hastily in the Jesus and Mary Chain’s studio on Walworth Road, London. “I took a big Fender semi-acoustic guitar, which had probably just been used for making April Skies, off the wall and just made it go twang,” Hannon says. “It had a real West of Ireland showband feel.

It’s like a backing track someone would use to sing The Rose of Tralee in the pub.” With Father Jack played by Frank Kelly – an erudite and actorly man displaying masterful restraint by sitting silently in the corner and shouting “ Drink! Feck! Girls! ” on cue – to complete the family unit, Craggy Island also began to function as a microcosm of Ireland. The episode in which Ted accidentally offends the island’s hitherto-unseen Chinese community was based on “really nasty racist convulsions” that accompanied unfamiliar waves of immigration. “Ireland’s 1950s happened in the 90s,” says Linehan. “It was really disappointing that you’ve got a reputation as the friendliest people on Earth, but as soon as it’s put to the test you fail. So there’s a lot of frustration about Ireland in Ted.” This particular episode would also enter the real world, twice, in 2013. At the British and Irish Lions match against Barbarians in Hong Kong, Irish fans unfurled a tricolour displaying the legend THE CHINESE: A GREAT BUNCH OF LADS .

And in an echo of Ted’s unfortunate accidental Hitler moustache, a glitch on the BBC’s big screen in Media City added a perfect black square to the top lip of Nigel Farage . In ways so mysterious they can only be filed away as an ecumenical matter, life continues to imitate Ted. Pinterest The death of Dermot Morgan of a heart attack on 28 February 1998, the day after he filmed the last episode of Ted, was not just a shock to fans and the programme’s makers. It seemed so grievously unfair and un-Ted-like. He was about to get the opportunities for which he’d worked all his life. Now he was gone at the age of 45. It was only afterwards that Linehan realised how pale the actor had often looked, and how hard they had driven the cast. Once, on location, Morgan had broken off filming to come over and tell Linehan: “Don’t worry about it.” Worry about what? “Oh … nothing,” the actor replied and hurried off to resume shooting.

“It was a weird little thing and I’m still not sure what he meant,” says Linehan, “but you do wonder.” “Dermot had been diagnosed with a medical condition,” says O’Hanlon, “but he was ignoring it, like men do. We think it’ll be fine, it’ll go away. He just didn’t want anyone to know, especially the programme-makers. What happened was incredibly sad.” The writers replaced the planned ending to the final episode – Father Ted standing on the ledge of a building, ready to jump – with a montage of Ted’s best-remembered moments. McLynn thinks it might have appealed to Morgan’s black sense of humour to leave the final scene as it was. So there could never have been any more of Father Ted, even if the creators had changed their minds about ending the series – nor any spin-offs, for the only character with any independent viability was Ted himself. Linehan doubts they could write a show like it today anyway. “The stuff that’s come out about the Catholic church since Ted is so horrific, and so real, that you just couldn’t play the priesthood for laughs,” he says.

“It just couldn’t work.” Permanently repeated on More4, Father Ted now exists in a bubble of time as well as its own pocket reality. It is beloved not only because it’s very, very funny but also because it’s the last, magnificent caricature of a particular kind of Ireland that modernity and an open Europe were already chasing away. “Ted had a profound effect on Irish culture,” says O’Hanlon, “and sometimes I even think the show did priests a favour by humanising them. There’s something intrinsically sad about men without women.” Maybe that’s the irony of this most determinedly non-ironic comedy. By setting out to lampoon that disappearing Ireland in all its ridiculous glory, Father Ted preserved it for ever.

Question: What TV series was set on Craggy Island?
Answer: Father Ted