Father Ted Crilly is the eponymous main character of the British Channel 4 situation comedy Father Ted. Created by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, Ted was portrayed by comedian Dermot Morgan for the programme's three series. The character is a morally dubious Roman Catholic priest exiled to Craggy Island, a small island off the coast of Galway in Ireland.
The character was originally created by Mathews for a short-lived stand-up routine in the late 1980s. In 1994, Linehan and Mathews cast Morgan in the role for the television series, developing the character to match his abilities. Morgan's performance was acclaimed; after his untimely death on 28 February 1998 from a heart attack, he was awarded a posthumous BAFTA for his work in the third series.
Concept and creation
Arthur Mathews had a lifelong fascination with priests, and developed the character of Father Ted while working at Hot Press with Graham Linehan and Paul Woodfull in 1987–89. After considering several surnames, Linehan suggested Crilly, which stuck. Mathews has described his version of Ted as a generic priest, but Woodfull saw the character as more camp, and later said that he felt Mathews had preempted the camp/gay priest stereotype in Irish comedy.
During production weekends, Mathews and Woodfull had the idea for The Joshua Trio, a comedic U2 tribute band. The band performed various warm-up sketches written by Mathews, Woodfull and Linehan, who joined in a non-musical capacity. This led to a side-project, a short-lived sketch troupe called The Fun Bunch. Deciding to base a sketch around Mathews's Father Ted character, the group brainstormed for a surname in Linehan's Castleknock kitchen; Linehan suggested Crilly, which stuck immediately. Mathews debuted his character on-stage at a comedy night in the Project Arts Centre. The character was received better than Woodfull's own working-class Dublin priest, and Mathews later appeared as Father Ted in warm-up sketches for The Joshua Trio and Woodfull's other musical act, Tony St James and The Las Vegas Sound. As Ted, Mathews sometimes read from a book, Notes from Africa, purportedly written by Father Dougal McGuire, a missionary friend who described his experiences of being attacked and chased by natives. In one sketch, Ted discussed his concern for Dougal, who had been voted Most Unpopular Priest in Africa for two years running and was spending Christmas up a tree in the grounds of The Bob Geldof Centre. During one Tony St James Olympia gig, audience members shouted "Not a fucking priest!", but were pleased when Ted produced a portable confessional and proceeded to talk about it. On one occasion at The Purty Loft in Dún Laoghaire, he sang "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off".
Later, Mathews and Woodfull included the character in The Starship Róisín, a short-lived science fiction comedy radio series they wrote for The Ian Dempsey Show on RTÉ Radio. An Irish parody of Star Trek, it followed the adventures of Captain Bono (played by Woodfull, based on the singer Bono) and his Vulcan sidekick Stephen "Spock" Roche (played by Mathews, based on cyclist Stephen Roche, with a "cold, cycling brain". Storylines involved "space bicycles", the ship chef Darina Alien (based on Darina Allen), emcee Tony St James (Woodfull), Johnny Guitar (a "little fella" who made guitar sounds), and ship chaplain Father Ted (Mathews). Woodfull later said that the show was "probably a bit too weird for [its] slot", and that, when the station suggested they take two of the characters and launch a spin-off called Tea and Toast with Tony and Ted, Mathews opted out.
In 1989, Ted (played by Mathews) performed with The Joshua Trio in an episode of the Irish music anthology series Nighthawks, marking the character's first televised appearance.
In 1990, Linehan and Mathews began writing Irish Lives, a six-part comedy television series. The show would have taken the form of a mockumentary, with each episode focusing on interviewing a different character; one of the six characters was Father Ted Crilly. The script, delivered in 1990, described Ted as "a perpetually jolly and rather sad man who, through some terrible accident of faith, has found himself in the priesthood." The story involved Ted returning to his seminary to catch up with his old friends, including Father Jack, whom he fails to realise has recently died. Producer Geoffrey Perkins asked Linehan and Mathews to discard the mockumentary format and expand the Father Ted episode to a traditional sitcom.