Father Ted FEQ 1.24
The main characters are three priests, who have been banished to the island for various unspecified crimes (details are hinted at in the third episode) and their housekeeper, Mrs Doyle. There are also regular appearances by the island's inhabitants, including warring couple John and Mary O'Leary.
The show is about three men living together in an isolated place, where there's not much to do except play Ludo all the time, and try to keep Father Jack out of trouble.
Dermot Morgan, who played Father Ted, was an established comic actor and writer. He wrote and starred in 'Scrap Saturday', a satirical radio show broadcast by RTE on Saturday mornings. This was a very popular show, taking the mickey out of politicians and celebrities, but it was not taken in good humour by the establishment.
Dermot also used to portray a comical priest character, 'Fr. Trendy' on various shows, and even published a book 'Trendy Sermons' (Extract courtesy of 'Denis Healy'). If that weren't enough he was also a regular columnist ("Morgan's Meanderings") on an Irish magazine called 'The Leinster People'.
Dermot died in February 1998.
Ardal O'Hanlon, who plays Father Dougal, is a writer and stand-up comic, currently working on the comedy circuit in London.
Frank Kelly, who plays Father Jack, is an established Irish actor, who has appeared in many satirical radio and TV shows, including the madcap TV programme "Hall's Pictorial Weekly". He is also the author of the novels 'The Annals of Ballykilferret' and 'Twelve Days of Chaos', available from all good booksellers (including O'Leary's).
It's an absurdly one-dimensional characterisation, but a very good portrayal for all that. Graham Linehan said: "We feel a bit sorry for Frank. It's probably frustrating for him to just shout for drink all the time, but I still think it's a very strong character. You don't have to do very much to make it work, but you have to do it very well."
They have written for Smith and Jones, and Alexei Sayle, and contributed sketches to The Day Today and The Fast Show. In 1994, they completed their first sitcom, Paris, which starred Alexei Sayle as an aspiring French artist. (Ian Miller notes that Linehan and Matthews cameo in one episode as a pair of Irish gendarmes.)
Arthur Mathews, whose uncle is a priest, has a great deal of affection for priests, and maintains he has always had good relations with the clergy.
He originally created the part of Father Ted for himself, and for a time he was a regular feature of Joshua Trio shows.
It has been suggested that the failure to prosecute a paedophile priest led to a change of government in Ireland in November 1994, and to the resignation of a high court judge (former Attorney General). It was discovered that the Roman Catholic church in Ireland was prone to move a priest elsewhere if people became suspicious of paedophile activities.
However, the writers tried very hard not to put in many overt references to the various unsavoury activities of priests. Father Jack is portrayed not just as alcoholic, which is fairly common in the clergy, but as a man fond of bleach, detergents and floor polish.
The writers wanted to base the characters on people they knew, but with greatly exaggerated characteristics. Graham Linehan said: "All the characters are based on some little peccadillo that the Irish have to some extent or another."
"It's based on people, but on complete exaggerations of them. If we have a character who's obnoxious, he has to be the most obnoxious character we can think of. Which is a very easy way to write really, to just get a particular characteristic and exaggerate it."
When the series was written, the writers felt that England was the best place to film the programme, because the expertise and infrastructure for Father Ted-style sitcoms was already in place, whereas Irish TV companies such as RTE didn't have such a good track record for this type of show.
As yet, it is unclear whether RTE will buy the series from Channel 4. As Graham Linehan (co-writer) said: "They're in a bad position. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. If they take it, it will be in a supplicating kind of way where they say, 'I know we should have done this ourselves', and if they don't take it they'll just look petty. I think they'll be embarrassed by it whatever happens."
Despite the English slant, the actors, writers, director and commissioning editor are all Irish.
From an anonymous contributor:
There is a cracking story behind all this: Originally Pulp were asked to write the theme tune, according to an interview I heard with Graham Linehan on London radio a few weeks ago... but they turned it down, reasons not specified. I'm sure they had a lot on their plate at that time.Word is, from Those Who Know, that DC once performed an impromptu rendition of 'My Lovely Horse' with Ardal O'H who was in the audience at the time. Nice.So anyway, they then asked Neil Hannon (who is the Divine Comedy, more or less on his own) to write a piece, which he duly did. And that's what's on the telly. But NH decided he liked the tune himself, and turned it into a complete song with lyrics etc, called 'Songs of Love'. As a song in its own right it works perfectly well, and you almost don't realise that it's the Ted tune until the instrumental break near the end.
The only problem is that now at any Divine Comedy gigs, when NH plays said song, all the crowd start shouting 'FECK! DRINK!' etc. Which irks him because he is a serious musician and they are treating his work of art as a mere TV theme.
I've transcribed the TV music for guitar, rather inexpertly, here.
Has anyone noticed the rather subtle Pulp Fiction reference in the episode with Father Jack and the Rabbits? When they go to get the rabbits "taken care of" by, oh blast I cannot remember his name, the one in the I shot JR t-shirt, [Tom. -Ed.] the psycho goes to get some weapons. First he takes a hammer, discards it in favour of a baseball bat, swaps that for a chainsaw and finally decides on a samurai sword. That sequence bears a remarkable similarity to a scene in PF - where Butch is about to deal with Zed and Maynard.
Thanks James. Keep spotting those references.
The scene at FunLand in GLFT with the shaven-headed banjo player and the dancing old man is a take-off of the hilarious anal-rape-and-canoeing movie Deliverance.
Rather obviously NOND is sort of based on Night of the Living Dead.
AND
Thanks Richard Hayes.
Thanks to Mark Coffey for those.
"The Miracle is Mine"
When I was young, I had a dream
And though the dream was very small,
It wouldn`t leave me.
To be a beggar for a fee
To play the poet or the fool
And now you see me.
And now the miracle is mine
And fault and the war begun
And now there`s nothing left to hide,
Still I.........(Scene shifts)
And now I`ve nothing left but time,
Still I reach out through this empty life.
Music and lyrics by Father Dick Byrne, Rugged Island.
Matty Hyslop is almost certainly based on a layman, not a priest. The model has to be Matt Talbot (1856 - 1925) recently beatified by the Catholic church. Talbot was a pugnacious, pint-sized drunken builder's labourer who took the pledge in 1884 and imposed a regime of mortification on himself.He slept on planks with a wooden block for a pillow, ate only dry bread and cocoa without milk and got up at 4 am every day to go to Mass. Talbot spent years trying to pay back money he'd borrowed when boozing.
Talbot was caught up in the 1913 lockout in Dublin and joined his fellow workers on strike. He didn't take an active part in picketting and for many years afterwards was often descibed as a "scab" though there is evidence that he gave money to married strikers.
Talbot collapsed and died in Granby Lane on June 7 1925 on his way to early morning mass. He was discovered to be wearing a chain around his waist, another round his arm, a cord around his other arm and a chain below one knee. he is buried in a vault in Glasnevin cemetery.
Is Frank Kelly of Father Jack fame the same Frank Kelly who had a hit single called "Christmas Countdown" in 1983? The single consisted of an Irishman writing letters to his beloved who kept sending him all the gifts in "The Twelve Days Of Christmas"... the letters started out "Dear Nora" when she sent the partridge in a pear tree, but had degenerated into "Listen manure face" by the time he had to contend with the eleven lords a-leaping!The answer, from our distinguished panel (the Priest-Chatback list) is 'Yes'.
Karl Lloyd informs us that Dermot Morgan once released a single in Ireland in the mid-80s. The song, called 'Thank you very much Mr Eastwood', is apparently about Barry McGuigan and his excessive post-fight platitudes. "It didn't chart," adds Karl succinctly.
"I've been asking various Irish people about the word "Feck" and I'm told that it is a word in its own right - not simply a "more acceptable" version of "Fuck". The mother of an ex-girlfriend was very Irish (she really *did* used to say "Jaysus Mary and Joseph") and she reckoned she was very surprised when she first came to England and people were shocked at hearing her say "feck"; they thought she meant "fuck" whereas as far as she was concerned "feck" was of about the same strength as "bloody". I don't know what the origin or meaning is though - perhaps somebody on soc.culture.celtic might have an idea?" - Tony Walton
"Incidentally, being a Catholic myself, I grew up surrounded by a lot of Irish priests and the school was full of Irish kids living in England and I remember the bigger kids saying "feck" all the time and saying it was Irish (Gaelic?) for "fuck". Still, you know big kids... it could just be bullshit." - David Poulet
"The word 'feck' is many things. It's a euphemism for 'fuck' as well as being a particularly Irish word meaning to steal, i.e. I've just fecked an apple, sweets, etc. It's normally used in 'polite' conversation." - mbyrne@dircon.co.uk
"My wife, who is Irish, assures me that the word 'Feck', comes from the Irish word 'feach' which means 'look', It is not an Irish swearword, but is used in such a way as to grab your attention."
Sarah Kelleher, aged 13, writes:
I have gone to an all Irish school all my life and I can tell you the true definition of the word Feck! By the way, I am actually the biggest fan ever of Father Ted, me of course knowing every episode off by heart!So at least now you know.The word Feck is also spelt in Irish (Gaelic) as the word 'feic' and as the word originated in Ireland 'feic' is the true way of spelling it. Translated directly it means 'to see' as it is an Irish verb. It begun to be used as a curse when foreign television stations came into Ireland using the word Fuck, and the Irish immediately saw that it resembled the word feic remarkably.
An interesting footnote: 'Fek!' is Esperanto for 'shit!' (seriously).
Several other people have written to say that 'Feck' is fundamentally a way for people to express the sentiments of 'Fuck' without actually using the word. A typically Irish solution to the problem.
The main locations are Kilfenora, Ennistymon (especially recognisable in TM) and Kilnaboy in Co.Clare. The Parochial House is McCormack's at Glenquin, on the Boston road from Kilnaboy. The island itself is Inisheer.
Neil Gibbs wants to know the name of the wrecked boat seen in the titles. Any obsessive comedy fans who have recently visited the island may care to enlighten us.
Ben Walsh identifies the cliffs that Ted hides Jack's drink in, in CAR, as the Cliffs of Moher in Co. Clare - Ireland's highest cliffs. How apposite.
Philip Collins writes:
The highlight of our recent jaunt around Ireland was tracking down the whereabouts of Teds house. After some asking around and some excellent directions from a bloke in a petrol station we wound our way down many a narrow lane 'till there it was in all its dull splendour, a marvellous sight on a sunny day!No guard dogs and a very friendly man who lives there who is happy to have a chat with you about the place, though I'm sure he'd get a bit fed up wih coach loads of people. It's just an ordinary big house in the middle of nowhere with a nice view of the Burren, some 15-20 miles from Ballyvaughn!
Some kind soul sent me this a while ago:
A friend and I visited the house of Father Ted (near Kilinaboy). I looked up the coordinates with my GPS, so if you are planning to update the site you might want to add them: W9.02998 N53.00976
And Paul Hedges even sent in photos:
![[ PICTURE: Parochial House, close up ]](parochial1.jpg)
![[ PICTURE: Parochial House, from the gate ]](parochial2.jpg)
Paul writes:
I had precise directions from Anna at Crumlin Lodge B+B in Fanore (Thanks!), basically you have to get onto the R476 from Corafin and go to Kilnaboy (look out for a ruined church, post office and phone box), take a right, go past the school, and just keep on following the road, you know you are near when you see a stream running on the left of the road, a bit further and the house is on the left.
When I arrived I took some pictures from the road, then walked up the driveway to the door, two sheepdogs thought this would be a good time to say hello and covered my trousers in muddy paw prints, at the door a young girl told me I had found "Teds" house, and also said it was O.K. for me to take pictures, I did not impose too long, after all, ordinary people now live here and I only took memories, photographs....and muddy paw prints away with me. One thing bothers me though; while talking at the door I heard a lamb bleat *inside* the house, maybe Father Jack is still up to his old tricks!!
The Very Dark Caves in TM are in fact the Allowie Caves quite near Ballyvaughn, 'fountainhead' informs me.
If you're a fan of the Funland travelling fair in GLFT, you can visit the location where those scenes were filmed at Laytown, and perhaps enjoy a game of Freak Pointing.
Sarah McNicholas informs me that her grandmother knows of a similar place in Clonmell in Galway, and Martin Deutsch knows of one at Electric Brae, near Culzean Castle in Scotland.
In particular, the original ending of the final episode (GTA) featured Ted committing suicide by jumping off the ledge outside 'It's Still Great Being A Priest '98'. Graham Linehan says:
The dark ending of 'Ted' really, really just didn't work and I can tell you exactly why. At the start of the show, there was a banner at the conference saying 'It's Great Being A Priest '98'. At the second conference (the one where a depressed Ted joins Father Kevin on the ledge, Dougal's 'for ever and ever and ever...' line ringing in his head), there _should_ have been a close-up of a banner that read "It's Still Great Being a Priest". Because we didn't have this, the audience at the time didn't understand that we were watching a _second_ conference. They seemed to think it was a flashback or something, and the scene played to complete silence.So, when we were editing, the sight of Ted standing on the ledge, thinking about whether or not to throw himself off, while an audience stared in complete, deathly silence, proved too much for us, and the idea of the montage was born.
Tel: 0171 434 2451
Tel: 0171 287 3836
As far as I know there is no official fan club for Ardal O'Hanlon (another popular question!) but you can contact his agent:
Dawn Sedgewick,Questions so far:
Q: How did Graham and Arthur get their work known to the right people? (Nicole)
A: Arthur and I were lucky enough to have a flair (I guess) for writing sketches, so we sent a few to the producers of 'Smith and Jones', who are always looking for fresh writers. We hung around the Talkback offices while that series was in preproduction and picked up lots of tips and contacts. After a while, we were in a good position to hand over a few sitcom ideas to various companies. I should stress we did not plan to do it that way--we just did it, and then realised later that we had done it that way. It was very much an organic, instinctive process. (GL)
Q: Stu Fraser writes:
I am Canadian who has been over here for about four years now. One of the things I've noticed about the television shows over here is that they tend to be the creation of one or two writers and stick to that. In comparison, most of the US shows seem to be written by committee (pap like Darma and Greg for instance.) Obviously there are exceptions to every rule; Babylon 5 was pretty much written solely by JMS, and I'm sure there are some UK shows done by a committee.Anywhoo, what I've noticed is that the shows written by one or two people 'work' much more effectively than the committee shows. Perhaps it's because the vision of the writers is able to come through more clearly without interference by other writers, editors and whatever, and that's why shows like Ted strike deeper than the others. However, I've also notice that the dislike shown by those who don't 'get' the show tends to be more strongly felt is well (if they don't like Ted, then they must be eejiots anyway, so it's easy to dismiss them).
I was just wondering how Graham and Arthur feel about these different styles of writing shows and their take on them.
A: I think the factory system produces good stuff, especially on 'The Simpsons', which benefits hugely from the clamour of so many different voices. But the best American sitcom featuring real-live actors has been 'Seinfeld' which, even though it had a lot of writers, didn't feel that way because Larry David had last say, and it was his obsessions and observations that led the way for the rest of the writing team (this is a lot of educated guesswork on my part, I should add). I realise that David wasn't there for the final few seasons, but in the best shows, you could sense they were still following his lead. On the other hand, 'Frasier' often looks written-by-group-vote to me, and I'm not a huge fan. (GL)
Q: Is Arthur still going out with Mel out of Mel and Sue from 'Late Lunch'? (Anna)
A: I've just called him, and he says 'Yes'. (GL).
This FEQ was conceived and written by Andy Raffle (andrew@raffle.demon.co.uk). However, it is now being maintained by me, John Arundel, so send your additions, corrections and amendments there.
Father Ted is a Hat Trick production, (c) Channel 4 Television Corporation.
(Updated 2008-10-15 14:02:13)
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