Comedy Connections (2003) s02e03 Episode Script
Father Ted
1 He makes the baby-sitter pregnant.
Now he doesn't know whether to stay with the wife, the sister or the baby-sitter.
- And when's his next confession? - Tuesday.
I'll keep you posted.
The recording nights were always brilliant fun.
Dermot and I could never really keep a straight face.
Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on GO ON! They put in some very physical stuff for Mrs Doyle to do.
That was a complete thrill.
One of my fondest memories was a stage direction written in all earnestness.
It says, "Caution, it is extremely dangerous to approach Father Jack.
" Wake up! Feck off! It's so nice to be associated with something as cool as Father Ted.
British people see it as this surreal, wacky comedy.
And, er, Irish people see it as an amusing documentary.
Everything about Father Ted was unusual.
It was a British sitcom set in Ireland, written by two Irishmen.
It had a cast of unknown actors in a less than promising setting.
A gloomy parochial house on bleak Craggy Island, home to three weird Catholic priests and their barmy, tea-obsessed housekeeper.
Father Ted was also unusually funny.
- It's a beautiful day out.
- My arse.
Would you like him on manual or automatic, Father? Automatic.
It's a nice day.
I might as well take it easy.
Fair enough Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan first met when they both earned a living on Dublin's Hot Press magazine, Linehan as a journalist and Mathews doing page layouts.
Mathews was also part of the mock-U2 tribute band, The Joshua Trio, which introduced an early version of Father Ted Crilley.
He's the man in black.
I used to introduce the band as Father Ted, a generic priest, but different from the way Dermot ended up playing him.
But he used to come on and say, "Hello, there's this great band coming up.
"If there's anyone at the back who can't see, "say hello to them because they're from St Finbar's School For The Blind.
" When Ted made a career move from warm-up priest to sitcom star, Arthur Mathews' knowledge of the character provided divine inspiration.
He would have the voice handy.
So whenever I needed to know what Ted might say, Arthur would just say it and it would be very easy to write that character.
By the end of the 1980s, Linehan and Mathews had left Dublin for London and had set their sights on television.
The long list of writers' credits at the end of a Smith and Jones sketch show convinced them that they could do that sort of thing too, so they sent some in.
Bravo.
Wank.
- What did he say then? Wank? - Yes, it was wank.
- Er, Gregorio, - Si? You seem to be tagging on a wank there.
Can we try it again without the wank? By 1994, the word was out on Linehan and Mathews, and they were in regular demand to contribute to the best and most ground-breaking shows, like The Day Today.
In tune with the humour of the time, they were also head writers on The All-New Alexei Sayle Show before striking gold with their creation of that sad oasis in the middle of The Fast Show, Ted and Ralph.
It's just I have, er, a couple of tickets for Tina Turner.
Right.
Do you like Tina Turner, Ted? I wouldn't know about that, sir.
No, no.
The Fast Show's producer, Geoffrey Perkins, rose quickly through the satirical ranks.
After writing for Spitting Image, he went on to produce Ben Elton's series, The Man From Auntie, and among others, Harry Enfield And Chums.
Although Linehan and Mathews could clearly handle sketches, they had yet to be given a chance to write a full-length show.
They went back to their roots and pitched the idea of a mock-documentary about a priests' reunion to Geoffrey Perkins.
Firstly, I just thought, this isn't something you could ever sell because who wants a one-off documentary about parody Irish priests? But there was a huge amount of invention there.
AndI got in touch with the writers and said, have you thought about this as a sitcom? It was while they were fleshing out Father Ted for Hat Trick Productions that Linehan and Mathews' first sitcom appeared on Channel 4, an historical-knockabout vehicle for Alexei Sayle called Paris.
- What are you doing? - I'm gonna kill you! You sold some paintings.
We always loved that idea of an artist who is just tortured by his own genius and can't have a cup of tea withoutyou know, going into spasms.
I thought you'd cut off your ear.
No, I had toothache.
I was wearing a bandage thing, you flying bollockhead.
I see.
Paris was critically mauled, and Linehan and Mathews' career looked to have prematurely stalled.
We couldn't read the newspapers for six weeks because the reviews were so bad.
You think, that's it, we're done for now.
But the writers risked further punishment by turning Father Ted into a sitcom.
Now they had to convince the man who'd bought Paris, Channel 4 commissioning editor Seamus Cassidy, that Ted had legs.
Paris stiffed very badly.
It got not very good reviews and it got lousy audiences.
There was a wee bit of pressure about giving another series to two writers who weren't that experienced and weren't that well-known.
It was probably about as hard a sell of a show you could ever have.
"Let's do a show which is about a group of Irish priests "on an island off the west coast of Ireland.
"Ooh, and by the way, it's gonna be acted by people you've never heard of.
" It's a fantastic pitch.
Holy Mary, Mother of God! The main fear I had was that it was too Irish.
It took Geoffrey and Paul Mayhew-Archer, our script editor, to convince me that both being impeccably English, they still found it funny.
I didn't have any problem with commissioning it because he scripts were laugh-out-loud funny.
and it's very rare, even with good comedies, that it lifts off the page like that.
How long has Father Jack been living in there? He started just a few days after you left.
- Maybe he's agoraphobic.
- Jack scared of fighting? I don't think so, Ted.
After three years in development, Father Ted was ready for liftoff.
With one failed sitcom to their names already, Linehan and Mathews had it all to prove.
Father Ted was riding on a wing, a prayer and ten Hail Maries.
The main thing we did was think of funny, embarrassing situations, and stupid things for characters.
Then we'd try and get them into a plot.
It's surprisingly easy to get funny scenes into a plot, and just crowbar them in.
Seemed to work quite well.
Dougal.
Look.
Ohhh! Oh-hohhh! I am Chinese, if you please.
Come on, Dougal, lighten up.
I think the only person who had an absolute belief that this show would be a huge hit was Dermot Morgan.
Former teacher Dermot Morgan made his TV debut in Ireland doing stand-up on The Live Mike in 1979.
By 1985, he had his own show, Getting Morganised.
In the early '90s, his brand of cutting political satire was heard on the RTÃ radio show, Scrap Saturday.
But Morgan's humour could make even the unflappable Gay Byrne uncomfortable.
Many songs are sung and written about Emmet, Pearse and Thorne, but no one knows that son of Ireland who loved to chew a bone.
A patriot so fearless, who fought doggedly for his nation.
Not a good Catholic nor a Protestant, but a bloody big Alsatian.
He'd been taken off TV and his radio show was upsetting a lot of people.
He'd kind of burnt his bridges in Ireland.
Unfortunately.
Irish TV and radio was very conservative and Dermot was making shows that were ruffling people's feathers.
Ted came along at a perfect time for him.
It was absolutely the vehicle to launch him again in another country.
Sorry about that, Father.
Didn't see you there.
So we did a first audition with Dermot, which was bad.
Not really He was very nervous.
I think he came over to England erm, just tried too hard, and Dermot wasn't an actor.
He was a charismatic person but he wasn't an actor.
It was quite hard for him.
Just play the (Beep) .
.
note.
- The first one? - No, not the (Beep) .
.
first one.
The (Beep) .
.
first one is already (Beep) .
.
down! I've never come across anybody so desperate.
You think, "If you're that desperate, probably you ought to do it.
" Just play the (Beep) .
.
note.
(Beep) .
.
you were just (Beep) .
.
doing! Play the (Beep) .
.
note! Ardal 0'Hanlon was at least hitting the right note on stage.
In the early '90s, he established himself on the stand-up comedy circuit.
Father Ted creator Arthur Mathews was a fan and was convinced he'd found his Dougal.
My name is Ardal.
I know quite a lot and I am going to tell you stuff I know.
Condoms, for example.
They're a disgrace, aren't they? They're useless and they're ineffective and they burst, and your stomach just can't cope with the sudden impact of two kilos of cocaine.
I got a call from Arthur saying, "Why haven't you turned up for auditions?" That was the auditions for Father Ted and so I said, "All right, I'll come in.
" I went in and they gave me some paper to read, and I read it.
A little while later, they said, "Would you like to be in the sitcom?" I said, "Fair enough," and that's really it.
Hello.
Father Dougal McGuire here.
Welcome to this week's Top Of The Pops.
I hadn't heard of Ardal.
The guys were banging on about Ardal for some time before we saw him.
When he came in for the audition, I didn't get it.
I thought he was awful.
Yes.
July 19th.
I wouldn't know, Ted, you big bollocks.
What was fantastic when you look at it, the character is stupid.
I said, I wouldn't know, Ted, you big bollocks.
But he didn't play him stupid.
He played him innocent, naive and childlike.
It's like having your ten-year-old kid with you.
Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again, Dougal? I have, yeah, you big gobshite.
I think Ardal's performance was the first thing to pull people in because when Ardal's face, when he does Dougal, relaxes into that mask, it's very funny.
Whoo! Ooh-hoo! He No, wait, what He's been what? I have got a note from Channel 4 saying, "Are you absolutely sure about Ardal?" I remember writing back saying, "I'm not sure about the show but I am sure about Ardal.
" You won't believe this.
Clint Eastwood was arrested for Wait, no, it's a film.
Ardal was a free-laugh character.
He just had to walk in the room and look around with that weird stare, and, you know, you were quids in.
OK, one last time.
These are small, but the ones out there are far away.
Small.
Far away.
Ah, forget it.
I felt I knew exactly what was going on in their strange minds.
I felt I really got it.
I just read it in the way I saw fit to read it.
Luckily, they agreed with that.
- Say when.
- Eh? - Say when.
- Eh? Tell me when you want me to stop.
That's it, is it? You sure you don't want any more? There seems to be something comedic about me.
I've tried to be a straight actor.
I come on and I'm very straight and then they all burst out laughing.
The only thing to do is to answer the call.
Drink! Feck! Arse! Girls! 0ne of Ireland's leading stage actors, Frank Kelly was a familiar face on Irish television.
In the '60s, he appeared as Professor Astro in Wanderly Wagon and later in the satirical Hall's Pictorial Weekly.
Will you shout your bloody mouths and eat your bloody custard? At the meeting, they asked me would I shout a whole string of expletives in the most eccentric way I could think of and as loud as I could.
I thought, these guys are really nuts.
They're off the wall, they've lost the plot.
This can't be a television series.
- Drink! Arse! - These really do work, don't they? Oh, you're right there, Ted.
Drink! Arse! Drink! (Silence ) Frank is a classically trained actor.
Frank's done all that stuff, everything.
So to have Frank A lovely voice when he speaks.
Normally, this commanding voice.
To have this very elegant gentleman and to be able to destroy his face, cover him in shit, put bogeys up his nose, wax out of his ears, the part was just perfect for him, he was fantastic at that.
Ah, no! Not Toilet Duck again? You know what that does to you.
He didn't have a lot to do in the show so you'd feel sorry for him from time to time.
We're going to have an elocution lesson.
Drink! You can't be saying that when the bishops come here.
Feck! - He was always there to offer advice - Girls! to break the tedium with a story, or an anecdote, or a song.
- "That.
" - Drink! Or indeed a poem.
Or a sketch.
Or a tune.
- "That.
" - Drink! He is a great character.
Drink! The other thing I used to call it was numb-buttock acting.
Get into an uncomfortable position and others are on camera for ten minutes, you stayed on that buttock.
That's a very numb feeling.
You get caught on an angle.
"When will this end?" And what do you say to a cup? Feck off, cup! He loves his cup of tea.
- Feck off! - There you go.
Feck off! Pauline McLynn had worked before with Dermot Morgan on Scrap Saturday.
Though an experienced theatre actress, sitcom was something she'd never tried.
With a week to go before the Father Ted filming started, McLynn convinced the team she could play the much older Mrs Doyle and handle a tea set.
Would you not have a drop? Just a little cup? - I'm fine.
- Go on.
I'll tell you what, Father.
I'll pour a cup for you, anyway, and you can have it if you want.
Mrs Doyle is, I think, possibly the sunniest-natured woman on this earth.
She's hard-working, beautiful in an unconventional way, we liked to say.
I think she just found her look sometime during the war and just stuck with it.
I read a bit of one of them once.
God, I couldn't finish it.
The language.
Unbelievable.
It's a bit gritty but that's the modern world.
It was a bit much for me, Father.
"Feck this and feck that.
" - Yes, Mrs Doyle.
- "You big bastard.
" Dreadful language.
There are loads of actresses who have done those sort of Irish housekeepers.
We saw all of them, really.
The trouble was, what they were giving you was that really good comic Irish housekeeper.
But I think what Graham and Arthur wrote was beyond that.
"I'll stick this effing pitchfork up your hole.
" That was another one, yes.
I see what you mean.
"Bastard this, bastard that.
" You can't move for the bastards in her novels.
It's wall-to-wall bastards.
- Is it, Mrs Doyle? - You bastard.
You fecker.
You bollocks.
"Get your bollocks out of my face.
" It was terrible, Father.
You just go and prepare for the nuns.
"Ride me sideways" was another one.
The minute I saw the scripts, I thought, I know what's going on here, and a few hours later, I got told, "Don't do anything to yourself, don't cut your hair, "we think you're it.
" That's rather exciting.
Father Ted was a far cry from previous ecclesiastical sitcoms.
In series one, we saw Craggy Island's priests at the funfair, bathtime in the parochial house, a protest against pornography - Down with this sort of thing.
- Careful, now.
And a good old-fashioned prayer meeting.
Here were all the ingredients for a cult classic but the reviews for series one were mixed.
People didn't know what to make of it.
It was quite big and broad in its performances.
Sometimes that can send an audience the wrong way, and certainly can send critics the wrong way.
God, it's lovely out.
I remember reading, "This is one of the most predictable shows I've ever seen," so I started to write things down I don't think you could have predicted.
Five minutes in, I'd written down 20 things you couldn't have predicted.
I reached a point where Father Dougal picks up a pair of binoculars and sees these giant ants, puts them down matter-of-factly and says The ants are back, Ted.
I gave up.
I just thought, you're on a different plane of predictability.
But some critics would find the Lottery predictable.
Luckily, Channel 4's commissioners disagreed and ten more episodes popped up like rabbits.
Just a bad dream, Your Grace.
Over in a moment.
0ver three series, Father Ted would win several Best Comedy Awards, and the Doubting Thomases were proved wrong.
It was very gradual.
It's a very gradual thing.
Maybe it was when we won a BAFTA, we thought, "OK, this is good.
" Anyway, Ted, let's play a game.
Chess or Buckaroo? - Actually, I wouldn't mind chess today.
- Really? No, only joking, Ted.
Buckaroo! That second series, they really surpassed themselves in the writing.
They were very confident at that point.
They'd got it.
They'd got the characters.
The performers had got the characters.
They knew where the gold was.
(Both scream ) Ted! Graham Norton came into the show because I'd heard him on Loose Ends.
Easy come, easy go, will you let me go? Bismillah! We will not let you go Let me go! Bismillah! Will not let you go Let me go! We cast him and that worked well.
We brought him back.
It's a character people like.
Let's have a screeching competition.
I'll go first.
Aaaargh! Father Noel is a very excitable, very enthusiastic priest with a love of young people and a special energy.
Come on.
Sing up.
.
.
at your heels, you stretched for the stars and you know how it feels To be too high The Father Noel stuff was great because he's just speechless.
I didn't have to do any of the proper acting stuff, listening or reacting.
I could just show off and then my bit was over.
Father Noel doesn't listen to anyone, so my bad acting, I think I got away with it.
(Muffled voice ) Who's that now? Is that Gerry Fields heading off to the disco? It's only us, we're heading out for some fresh air.
Don't forget to bring us back some.
Ha ha! Right so You big, fecking eejit.
Father Ted's success can be put down to the expertise of a cast of top stand-up comedians and comic actors delivering equally brilliant lines, but that mix also led to some friction.
I think it was quite difficult for Frank, who is a big actor and a big, proper actor, who is playing a character, which he does brilliantly and which has a huge impact, but basically does say a lot of the time, "Feck, arse, girls, drink.
" And Dermot, who is not an actor, who is going through a lot of angst of "Sorry, can I just do this in a?" Sometimes, you could sense, or indeed hear, Frank in the background, just chuntering under his breath about "fucking amateurs".
That was a brilliant thing, they weren't actors.
An actor will give the same performance over and over again, it's consistent.
Dermot and Ardal would go into the studio on a Friday night.
The audience is there, thery're flying, things would happen.
Little looks and pauses and gaps in the dialogue.
It was just fantastic.
Ah, Dougal.
Great news.
I've been asked to go and work in America.
Really? As what? - Well, as a priest.
- A priest.
Great.
That's more or less the same as what you do here.
During the writing of the third series, Linehan and Mathews took the brave decision to quit while they were ahead and make this one the last.
From their original idea for a spoof documentary back in 1992, the writers had seen Father Ted through 25 successful and award-winning shows.
You can't have more than three series before you start repeating yourself.
In fact, we did start repeating ourselves a bit.
Mrs Doyle falling out the window in one episode is fine but maybe not in two.
You're getting into areas where maybe it's time to put them back in their ventriloquist's cases.
The day after filming finished on the third and final series of Father Ted, Dermot Morgan collapsed and died from a heart attack.
He was 46 years old.
We were in the canteen in Southbank Studios one day, and Pauline looked out the window and she said, "Wouldn't you have far preferred to be in a smelly hall, "rehearsing a bad play for poor money in Dublin today?" I broke my backside laughing.
No, I wouldn't have far preferred.
We were living pretty well, thank you.
Frank Kelly returned to drier roles, appearing with Pauline McLynn in the costume drama Aristocrats.
In 2001, he was among 2,001 comedy performers in the sketch show Revolver.
Kelly then played Labour Party leader John Smith in The Deal.
During the last few shows, when we were in the studios and we knew it was going to end.
People wanted any sort of memorabilia.
Ardal and Dermot would often in a sort of rock'n'roll way tear off their little white priest collar and throw them into the crowd.
Eventually, my moles were being offered, which was the most disgusting thing.
The make-up lady would come out with a tray of moles.
"Would anybody like these?" Just horrible.
Minus the wandering mole and the teapot, Pauline McLynn demonstrated both versatility and dress sense alongside Frank Kelly in Aristocrats.
She then played pushy Bella Mooney in Ballykissangel before returning to comedy in a sketch show, TV To Go, in 2002.
After time was called on Father Ted, Ardal 0'Hanlon resumed his earlier career, hosting the BBC Stand-up Show.
In 2000, he finally consigned Dougal's dog collar to the past, donning red lycra pants to play all-action superhero Thermoman.
It was a pleasure to save the life of such a beautiful woman.
- What do you think? - You are Thermoman.
Ta-da! We're gonna have such fun.
Look what I can do.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking, "Oh, my God, what would I be doing now if Father Ted hadn't come along, "if I hadn't got that phone call at the last moment from Arthur?" A career dangles from such a slender thread, but yeah, it definitely changed everything.
Having abandoned the priests to their fate on crazy Craggy Island, Father Ted's creators, Linehan and Mathews, concocted an even stranger brew of sketches in two series of unfettered surrealism called Big Train.
Ooh.
Very tart.
In 1999, Arthur Mathews and producer Geoffrey Perkins worked together again on Hippies, which only ran for one series.
Bummer.
In 2000, Linehan and Mathews were back together writing sketches for Chris Morris's latest nightmare vision, Jam.
But in 2002, Graham Linehan returned to safer sitcom territory, co-writing Black Books with the show's star Dylan Moran.
Go on, all you time-wasting bastards.
Arthur Mathews joined the writing team for the second series.
Bye-bye.
Back to reality, thank you.
I've worked with a couple of genuine, I hate to use this word, comic geniuses.
I worked with Douglas Adams and various other people.
I think Graham and Arthur are there.
They were a fascinating combination.
(Howling) It seems to be coming from all around us.
The Sioux Indians in the Arizona Desert used to be able to pinpoint the exact location of buffalo by gauging the position of the moon and putting their ears to the ground.
Actually, Ted, maybe the sound is coming from that stereo.
I think the '90s was just a brilliant decade for comedy.
It was great to be at the sitcom end of that new wave of comedy.
- Arse! - Feck! - Drink! - Girls! - Drink! - Feck! - Drink! - Feck! "Feck off" is a very gentle way of telling someone to go away.
I wouldn't say it was anything more than that.
It's like, "Ah, feck it".
It's a word that we all use from a very early age.
It's one of the first words we learn in Ireland.
Well, "feck" is just "fuck" with an E in it.
Is it true that it's in the Oxford English Dictionary now? I think it is.
That's brilliant.
There's the legacy of Ted.
The Oxford English Dictionary defiled.
Feck off! - Night, Dougal.
- Night, Ted.
Now he doesn't know whether to stay with the wife, the sister or the baby-sitter.
- And when's his next confession? - Tuesday.
I'll keep you posted.
The recording nights were always brilliant fun.
Dermot and I could never really keep a straight face.
Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on GO ON! They put in some very physical stuff for Mrs Doyle to do.
That was a complete thrill.
One of my fondest memories was a stage direction written in all earnestness.
It says, "Caution, it is extremely dangerous to approach Father Jack.
" Wake up! Feck off! It's so nice to be associated with something as cool as Father Ted.
British people see it as this surreal, wacky comedy.
And, er, Irish people see it as an amusing documentary.
Everything about Father Ted was unusual.
It was a British sitcom set in Ireland, written by two Irishmen.
It had a cast of unknown actors in a less than promising setting.
A gloomy parochial house on bleak Craggy Island, home to three weird Catholic priests and their barmy, tea-obsessed housekeeper.
Father Ted was also unusually funny.
- It's a beautiful day out.
- My arse.
Would you like him on manual or automatic, Father? Automatic.
It's a nice day.
I might as well take it easy.
Fair enough Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan first met when they both earned a living on Dublin's Hot Press magazine, Linehan as a journalist and Mathews doing page layouts.
Mathews was also part of the mock-U2 tribute band, The Joshua Trio, which introduced an early version of Father Ted Crilley.
He's the man in black.
I used to introduce the band as Father Ted, a generic priest, but different from the way Dermot ended up playing him.
But he used to come on and say, "Hello, there's this great band coming up.
"If there's anyone at the back who can't see, "say hello to them because they're from St Finbar's School For The Blind.
" When Ted made a career move from warm-up priest to sitcom star, Arthur Mathews' knowledge of the character provided divine inspiration.
He would have the voice handy.
So whenever I needed to know what Ted might say, Arthur would just say it and it would be very easy to write that character.
By the end of the 1980s, Linehan and Mathews had left Dublin for London and had set their sights on television.
The long list of writers' credits at the end of a Smith and Jones sketch show convinced them that they could do that sort of thing too, so they sent some in.
Bravo.
Wank.
- What did he say then? Wank? - Yes, it was wank.
- Er, Gregorio, - Si? You seem to be tagging on a wank there.
Can we try it again without the wank? By 1994, the word was out on Linehan and Mathews, and they were in regular demand to contribute to the best and most ground-breaking shows, like The Day Today.
In tune with the humour of the time, they were also head writers on The All-New Alexei Sayle Show before striking gold with their creation of that sad oasis in the middle of The Fast Show, Ted and Ralph.
It's just I have, er, a couple of tickets for Tina Turner.
Right.
Do you like Tina Turner, Ted? I wouldn't know about that, sir.
No, no.
The Fast Show's producer, Geoffrey Perkins, rose quickly through the satirical ranks.
After writing for Spitting Image, he went on to produce Ben Elton's series, The Man From Auntie, and among others, Harry Enfield And Chums.
Although Linehan and Mathews could clearly handle sketches, they had yet to be given a chance to write a full-length show.
They went back to their roots and pitched the idea of a mock-documentary about a priests' reunion to Geoffrey Perkins.
Firstly, I just thought, this isn't something you could ever sell because who wants a one-off documentary about parody Irish priests? But there was a huge amount of invention there.
AndI got in touch with the writers and said, have you thought about this as a sitcom? It was while they were fleshing out Father Ted for Hat Trick Productions that Linehan and Mathews' first sitcom appeared on Channel 4, an historical-knockabout vehicle for Alexei Sayle called Paris.
- What are you doing? - I'm gonna kill you! You sold some paintings.
We always loved that idea of an artist who is just tortured by his own genius and can't have a cup of tea withoutyou know, going into spasms.
I thought you'd cut off your ear.
No, I had toothache.
I was wearing a bandage thing, you flying bollockhead.
I see.
Paris was critically mauled, and Linehan and Mathews' career looked to have prematurely stalled.
We couldn't read the newspapers for six weeks because the reviews were so bad.
You think, that's it, we're done for now.
But the writers risked further punishment by turning Father Ted into a sitcom.
Now they had to convince the man who'd bought Paris, Channel 4 commissioning editor Seamus Cassidy, that Ted had legs.
Paris stiffed very badly.
It got not very good reviews and it got lousy audiences.
There was a wee bit of pressure about giving another series to two writers who weren't that experienced and weren't that well-known.
It was probably about as hard a sell of a show you could ever have.
"Let's do a show which is about a group of Irish priests "on an island off the west coast of Ireland.
"Ooh, and by the way, it's gonna be acted by people you've never heard of.
" It's a fantastic pitch.
Holy Mary, Mother of God! The main fear I had was that it was too Irish.
It took Geoffrey and Paul Mayhew-Archer, our script editor, to convince me that both being impeccably English, they still found it funny.
I didn't have any problem with commissioning it because he scripts were laugh-out-loud funny.
and it's very rare, even with good comedies, that it lifts off the page like that.
How long has Father Jack been living in there? He started just a few days after you left.
- Maybe he's agoraphobic.
- Jack scared of fighting? I don't think so, Ted.
After three years in development, Father Ted was ready for liftoff.
With one failed sitcom to their names already, Linehan and Mathews had it all to prove.
Father Ted was riding on a wing, a prayer and ten Hail Maries.
The main thing we did was think of funny, embarrassing situations, and stupid things for characters.
Then we'd try and get them into a plot.
It's surprisingly easy to get funny scenes into a plot, and just crowbar them in.
Seemed to work quite well.
Dougal.
Look.
Ohhh! Oh-hohhh! I am Chinese, if you please.
Come on, Dougal, lighten up.
I think the only person who had an absolute belief that this show would be a huge hit was Dermot Morgan.
Former teacher Dermot Morgan made his TV debut in Ireland doing stand-up on The Live Mike in 1979.
By 1985, he had his own show, Getting Morganised.
In the early '90s, his brand of cutting political satire was heard on the RTÃ radio show, Scrap Saturday.
But Morgan's humour could make even the unflappable Gay Byrne uncomfortable.
Many songs are sung and written about Emmet, Pearse and Thorne, but no one knows that son of Ireland who loved to chew a bone.
A patriot so fearless, who fought doggedly for his nation.
Not a good Catholic nor a Protestant, but a bloody big Alsatian.
He'd been taken off TV and his radio show was upsetting a lot of people.
He'd kind of burnt his bridges in Ireland.
Unfortunately.
Irish TV and radio was very conservative and Dermot was making shows that were ruffling people's feathers.
Ted came along at a perfect time for him.
It was absolutely the vehicle to launch him again in another country.
Sorry about that, Father.
Didn't see you there.
So we did a first audition with Dermot, which was bad.
Not really He was very nervous.
I think he came over to England erm, just tried too hard, and Dermot wasn't an actor.
He was a charismatic person but he wasn't an actor.
It was quite hard for him.
Just play the (Beep) .
.
note.
- The first one? - No, not the (Beep) .
.
first one.
The (Beep) .
.
first one is already (Beep) .
.
down! I've never come across anybody so desperate.
You think, "If you're that desperate, probably you ought to do it.
" Just play the (Beep) .
.
note.
(Beep) .
.
you were just (Beep) .
.
doing! Play the (Beep) .
.
note! Ardal 0'Hanlon was at least hitting the right note on stage.
In the early '90s, he established himself on the stand-up comedy circuit.
Father Ted creator Arthur Mathews was a fan and was convinced he'd found his Dougal.
My name is Ardal.
I know quite a lot and I am going to tell you stuff I know.
Condoms, for example.
They're a disgrace, aren't they? They're useless and they're ineffective and they burst, and your stomach just can't cope with the sudden impact of two kilos of cocaine.
I got a call from Arthur saying, "Why haven't you turned up for auditions?" That was the auditions for Father Ted and so I said, "All right, I'll come in.
" I went in and they gave me some paper to read, and I read it.
A little while later, they said, "Would you like to be in the sitcom?" I said, "Fair enough," and that's really it.
Hello.
Father Dougal McGuire here.
Welcome to this week's Top Of The Pops.
I hadn't heard of Ardal.
The guys were banging on about Ardal for some time before we saw him.
When he came in for the audition, I didn't get it.
I thought he was awful.
Yes.
July 19th.
I wouldn't know, Ted, you big bollocks.
What was fantastic when you look at it, the character is stupid.
I said, I wouldn't know, Ted, you big bollocks.
But he didn't play him stupid.
He played him innocent, naive and childlike.
It's like having your ten-year-old kid with you.
Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again, Dougal? I have, yeah, you big gobshite.
I think Ardal's performance was the first thing to pull people in because when Ardal's face, when he does Dougal, relaxes into that mask, it's very funny.
Whoo! Ooh-hoo! He No, wait, what He's been what? I have got a note from Channel 4 saying, "Are you absolutely sure about Ardal?" I remember writing back saying, "I'm not sure about the show but I am sure about Ardal.
" You won't believe this.
Clint Eastwood was arrested for Wait, no, it's a film.
Ardal was a free-laugh character.
He just had to walk in the room and look around with that weird stare, and, you know, you were quids in.
OK, one last time.
These are small, but the ones out there are far away.
Small.
Far away.
Ah, forget it.
I felt I knew exactly what was going on in their strange minds.
I felt I really got it.
I just read it in the way I saw fit to read it.
Luckily, they agreed with that.
- Say when.
- Eh? - Say when.
- Eh? Tell me when you want me to stop.
That's it, is it? You sure you don't want any more? There seems to be something comedic about me.
I've tried to be a straight actor.
I come on and I'm very straight and then they all burst out laughing.
The only thing to do is to answer the call.
Drink! Feck! Arse! Girls! 0ne of Ireland's leading stage actors, Frank Kelly was a familiar face on Irish television.
In the '60s, he appeared as Professor Astro in Wanderly Wagon and later in the satirical Hall's Pictorial Weekly.
Will you shout your bloody mouths and eat your bloody custard? At the meeting, they asked me would I shout a whole string of expletives in the most eccentric way I could think of and as loud as I could.
I thought, these guys are really nuts.
They're off the wall, they've lost the plot.
This can't be a television series.
- Drink! Arse! - These really do work, don't they? Oh, you're right there, Ted.
Drink! Arse! Drink! (Silence ) Frank is a classically trained actor.
Frank's done all that stuff, everything.
So to have Frank A lovely voice when he speaks.
Normally, this commanding voice.
To have this very elegant gentleman and to be able to destroy his face, cover him in shit, put bogeys up his nose, wax out of his ears, the part was just perfect for him, he was fantastic at that.
Ah, no! Not Toilet Duck again? You know what that does to you.
He didn't have a lot to do in the show so you'd feel sorry for him from time to time.
We're going to have an elocution lesson.
Drink! You can't be saying that when the bishops come here.
Feck! - He was always there to offer advice - Girls! to break the tedium with a story, or an anecdote, or a song.
- "That.
" - Drink! Or indeed a poem.
Or a sketch.
Or a tune.
- "That.
" - Drink! He is a great character.
Drink! The other thing I used to call it was numb-buttock acting.
Get into an uncomfortable position and others are on camera for ten minutes, you stayed on that buttock.
That's a very numb feeling.
You get caught on an angle.
"When will this end?" And what do you say to a cup? Feck off, cup! He loves his cup of tea.
- Feck off! - There you go.
Feck off! Pauline McLynn had worked before with Dermot Morgan on Scrap Saturday.
Though an experienced theatre actress, sitcom was something she'd never tried.
With a week to go before the Father Ted filming started, McLynn convinced the team she could play the much older Mrs Doyle and handle a tea set.
Would you not have a drop? Just a little cup? - I'm fine.
- Go on.
I'll tell you what, Father.
I'll pour a cup for you, anyway, and you can have it if you want.
Mrs Doyle is, I think, possibly the sunniest-natured woman on this earth.
She's hard-working, beautiful in an unconventional way, we liked to say.
I think she just found her look sometime during the war and just stuck with it.
I read a bit of one of them once.
God, I couldn't finish it.
The language.
Unbelievable.
It's a bit gritty but that's the modern world.
It was a bit much for me, Father.
"Feck this and feck that.
" - Yes, Mrs Doyle.
- "You big bastard.
" Dreadful language.
There are loads of actresses who have done those sort of Irish housekeepers.
We saw all of them, really.
The trouble was, what they were giving you was that really good comic Irish housekeeper.
But I think what Graham and Arthur wrote was beyond that.
"I'll stick this effing pitchfork up your hole.
" That was another one, yes.
I see what you mean.
"Bastard this, bastard that.
" You can't move for the bastards in her novels.
It's wall-to-wall bastards.
- Is it, Mrs Doyle? - You bastard.
You fecker.
You bollocks.
"Get your bollocks out of my face.
" It was terrible, Father.
You just go and prepare for the nuns.
"Ride me sideways" was another one.
The minute I saw the scripts, I thought, I know what's going on here, and a few hours later, I got told, "Don't do anything to yourself, don't cut your hair, "we think you're it.
" That's rather exciting.
Father Ted was a far cry from previous ecclesiastical sitcoms.
In series one, we saw Craggy Island's priests at the funfair, bathtime in the parochial house, a protest against pornography - Down with this sort of thing.
- Careful, now.
And a good old-fashioned prayer meeting.
Here were all the ingredients for a cult classic but the reviews for series one were mixed.
People didn't know what to make of it.
It was quite big and broad in its performances.
Sometimes that can send an audience the wrong way, and certainly can send critics the wrong way.
God, it's lovely out.
I remember reading, "This is one of the most predictable shows I've ever seen," so I started to write things down I don't think you could have predicted.
Five minutes in, I'd written down 20 things you couldn't have predicted.
I reached a point where Father Dougal picks up a pair of binoculars and sees these giant ants, puts them down matter-of-factly and says The ants are back, Ted.
I gave up.
I just thought, you're on a different plane of predictability.
But some critics would find the Lottery predictable.
Luckily, Channel 4's commissioners disagreed and ten more episodes popped up like rabbits.
Just a bad dream, Your Grace.
Over in a moment.
0ver three series, Father Ted would win several Best Comedy Awards, and the Doubting Thomases were proved wrong.
It was very gradual.
It's a very gradual thing.
Maybe it was when we won a BAFTA, we thought, "OK, this is good.
" Anyway, Ted, let's play a game.
Chess or Buckaroo? - Actually, I wouldn't mind chess today.
- Really? No, only joking, Ted.
Buckaroo! That second series, they really surpassed themselves in the writing.
They were very confident at that point.
They'd got it.
They'd got the characters.
The performers had got the characters.
They knew where the gold was.
(Both scream ) Ted! Graham Norton came into the show because I'd heard him on Loose Ends.
Easy come, easy go, will you let me go? Bismillah! We will not let you go Let me go! Bismillah! Will not let you go Let me go! We cast him and that worked well.
We brought him back.
It's a character people like.
Let's have a screeching competition.
I'll go first.
Aaaargh! Father Noel is a very excitable, very enthusiastic priest with a love of young people and a special energy.
Come on.
Sing up.
.
.
at your heels, you stretched for the stars and you know how it feels To be too high The Father Noel stuff was great because he's just speechless.
I didn't have to do any of the proper acting stuff, listening or reacting.
I could just show off and then my bit was over.
Father Noel doesn't listen to anyone, so my bad acting, I think I got away with it.
(Muffled voice ) Who's that now? Is that Gerry Fields heading off to the disco? It's only us, we're heading out for some fresh air.
Don't forget to bring us back some.
Ha ha! Right so You big, fecking eejit.
Father Ted's success can be put down to the expertise of a cast of top stand-up comedians and comic actors delivering equally brilliant lines, but that mix also led to some friction.
I think it was quite difficult for Frank, who is a big actor and a big, proper actor, who is playing a character, which he does brilliantly and which has a huge impact, but basically does say a lot of the time, "Feck, arse, girls, drink.
" And Dermot, who is not an actor, who is going through a lot of angst of "Sorry, can I just do this in a?" Sometimes, you could sense, or indeed hear, Frank in the background, just chuntering under his breath about "fucking amateurs".
That was a brilliant thing, they weren't actors.
An actor will give the same performance over and over again, it's consistent.
Dermot and Ardal would go into the studio on a Friday night.
The audience is there, thery're flying, things would happen.
Little looks and pauses and gaps in the dialogue.
It was just fantastic.
Ah, Dougal.
Great news.
I've been asked to go and work in America.
Really? As what? - Well, as a priest.
- A priest.
Great.
That's more or less the same as what you do here.
During the writing of the third series, Linehan and Mathews took the brave decision to quit while they were ahead and make this one the last.
From their original idea for a spoof documentary back in 1992, the writers had seen Father Ted through 25 successful and award-winning shows.
You can't have more than three series before you start repeating yourself.
In fact, we did start repeating ourselves a bit.
Mrs Doyle falling out the window in one episode is fine but maybe not in two.
You're getting into areas where maybe it's time to put them back in their ventriloquist's cases.
The day after filming finished on the third and final series of Father Ted, Dermot Morgan collapsed and died from a heart attack.
He was 46 years old.
We were in the canteen in Southbank Studios one day, and Pauline looked out the window and she said, "Wouldn't you have far preferred to be in a smelly hall, "rehearsing a bad play for poor money in Dublin today?" I broke my backside laughing.
No, I wouldn't have far preferred.
We were living pretty well, thank you.
Frank Kelly returned to drier roles, appearing with Pauline McLynn in the costume drama Aristocrats.
In 2001, he was among 2,001 comedy performers in the sketch show Revolver.
Kelly then played Labour Party leader John Smith in The Deal.
During the last few shows, when we were in the studios and we knew it was going to end.
People wanted any sort of memorabilia.
Ardal and Dermot would often in a sort of rock'n'roll way tear off their little white priest collar and throw them into the crowd.
Eventually, my moles were being offered, which was the most disgusting thing.
The make-up lady would come out with a tray of moles.
"Would anybody like these?" Just horrible.
Minus the wandering mole and the teapot, Pauline McLynn demonstrated both versatility and dress sense alongside Frank Kelly in Aristocrats.
She then played pushy Bella Mooney in Ballykissangel before returning to comedy in a sketch show, TV To Go, in 2002.
After time was called on Father Ted, Ardal 0'Hanlon resumed his earlier career, hosting the BBC Stand-up Show.
In 2000, he finally consigned Dougal's dog collar to the past, donning red lycra pants to play all-action superhero Thermoman.
It was a pleasure to save the life of such a beautiful woman.
- What do you think? - You are Thermoman.
Ta-da! We're gonna have such fun.
Look what I can do.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking, "Oh, my God, what would I be doing now if Father Ted hadn't come along, "if I hadn't got that phone call at the last moment from Arthur?" A career dangles from such a slender thread, but yeah, it definitely changed everything.
Having abandoned the priests to their fate on crazy Craggy Island, Father Ted's creators, Linehan and Mathews, concocted an even stranger brew of sketches in two series of unfettered surrealism called Big Train.
Ooh.
Very tart.
In 1999, Arthur Mathews and producer Geoffrey Perkins worked together again on Hippies, which only ran for one series.
Bummer.
In 2000, Linehan and Mathews were back together writing sketches for Chris Morris's latest nightmare vision, Jam.
But in 2002, Graham Linehan returned to safer sitcom territory, co-writing Black Books with the show's star Dylan Moran.
Go on, all you time-wasting bastards.
Arthur Mathews joined the writing team for the second series.
Bye-bye.
Back to reality, thank you.
I've worked with a couple of genuine, I hate to use this word, comic geniuses.
I worked with Douglas Adams and various other people.
I think Graham and Arthur are there.
They were a fascinating combination.
(Howling) It seems to be coming from all around us.
The Sioux Indians in the Arizona Desert used to be able to pinpoint the exact location of buffalo by gauging the position of the moon and putting their ears to the ground.
Actually, Ted, maybe the sound is coming from that stereo.
I think the '90s was just a brilliant decade for comedy.
It was great to be at the sitcom end of that new wave of comedy.
- Arse! - Feck! - Drink! - Girls! - Drink! - Feck! - Drink! - Feck! "Feck off" is a very gentle way of telling someone to go away.
I wouldn't say it was anything more than that.
It's like, "Ah, feck it".
It's a word that we all use from a very early age.
It's one of the first words we learn in Ireland.
Well, "feck" is just "fuck" with an E in it.
Is it true that it's in the Oxford English Dictionary now? I think it is.
That's brilliant.
There's the legacy of Ted.
The Oxford English Dictionary defiled.
Feck off! - Night, Dougal.
- Night, Ted.