List of Father Ted characters
Father Ted Crilly, played by Dermot Morgan, is a morally dubious Roman Catholic priest exiled to Craggy Island under suspicion of stealing money intended to fund a child's pilgrimage to Lourdes and using it, instead, to pay for his own trip to Las Vegas.
Father Dougal McGuire, played by Ardal O'Hanlon, is a childlike, simple-minded Catholic priest exiled as punishment for "the Blackrock incident".
Father Jack Hackett, played by Frank Kelly, is an elderly, foul-mouthed, alcoholic priest whose vocabulary consists largely of the shouted words "feck", "arse", "drink" and "girls".
While it is never explicitly stated why Bishop Brennan has condemned him to Craggy Island, in the episode "The Passion of Saint Tibulus" it is implied that it has something to do with a wedding ceremony Jack performed in Athlone.
It is later revealed, in his will, that he saved up £500,000, which Ted attributes partly to Jack's "never giving money to charity" and that "he wouldn't wear trousers during the summer".
Over the course of the series, he is revealed to have drunk Toilet Duck (which made him hallucinate, seeing pink elephants and the people around him as bizarre oddities), floor polish (which slowed down his metabolism to the point that everyone thought he was dead), brake fluid (which exacerbated his "Hairy Hands Syndrome"), anointing oil, Harpic and Windolene.
Jack also has a variety of smells, including vegetables, which attracted rabbits (which he refers to as "rats" and "hairy Japanese bastards") in the episode "The Plague".
In the episode "Escape from Victory", it emerges that Jack slept for 14 days straight after drinking a whole bottle of an alcoholic sleeping aid known as "Dreamy Sleepy Nightie Snoozy Snooze", which is banned in most European countries.
In "The Craggy Island Parish Magazines" (a book representing a collection of copies of the fictional "Our Parish" parochial magazine), it is stated that Father Jack served as chaplain to the fictional Paraguayan leader General Guillermo Paz for three years in the 1950s, until he left hours before Paz was hanged from a lemon tree by a group of peasants during an uprising.
In the DVD commentary with Arthur Matthews in the episode Old Grey Whistle Theft Linehan stated that they 'did have a name for Mrs Doyle'.
"[4] Whenever Ted or somebody else refuses one of her beverages, sandwiches or cake, she urges them on for some time, usually just by repeating "go on, go on", until the offending priest or guest finally agrees just for the sake of some peace.
Aside from simple domestic chores, Mrs Doyle also performs all the other tasks that need completing around the house, such as digging drainage ditches and mending the roof.
Graham Linehan has stated that he always thought Mrs Doyle originally met Father Ted by winning the Lovely Girls competition.
Bishop Brennan is a stern, overbearing, foul-mouthed, lecherous, hypocritical narcissist who despises Ted and frequently casts a shadow over his lowly priest's life.
Throughout the series he consistently addresses Ted using his surname: "Crilly", and this reference is one of several traits that symbolises his displeasure of the Fathers' incompetence.
Brennan has also forsaken his vows of celibacy; in "The Passion of Saint Tibulus", it is revealed that he has a secret partner and love child in America.
It is unknown how the feud started, but Dougal once mentions a "Scrabble fiasco" (in which Father Byrne manages to get all of his words to spell "useless priest, can't say Mass").
These include fooling him on the phone into thinking that Dick had sincerely believed Ted's Eurovision song would be good, and winning the annual "All-Priests Five-a-Side Over-75s Indoor Football Challenge Match".
Ted mentions an occasion where Dick had lost a bet with him and that as a forfeit, he had had to say "bollocks" very loudly in front of the (then) Irish President Mary Robinson.
In the 2010 Channel 4 retrospective Small, Far Away – The World of Father Ted, Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews state that Maurice O'Donoghue and the rest of the Rugged Island cast were each their second choices to play the main characters on the show.
Examples of Larry's mishaps include driving off a cliff in his Ford Cortina while looking for his ringing mobile ("Hell"), losing £10,000 in a TV gameshow when Ted interrupts his concentration by ringing him ("Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading"), getting hit while volunteering for a blind-folded knife throwing act, ("Tentacles of Doom") and being trampled by a herd of stampeding donkeys ("Flight Into Terror").
Here he invades the peaceful surroundings of the priests' rented caravan and keeps them awake at night, singing songs ("The Whole of the Moon" and "Dirty Old Town") and expressing his desire to tell ghost stories at six o'clock in the morning.
Despite his quiet persona, Father Stone's presence dominates those around him, leading to awkward and protracted silences, which suck the life out of the room, ruining Ted's birthday party as a result.
His unresponsiveness makes him practically impossible to get rid of, causing Ted and the others to go to great lengths just to avoid contact with him, such as going to bed extremely early or going out to the island's sub-standard crazy golf course in the pouring rain.
He gets stuck in the same position as he was when he is struck, and surgeons are unable to remove the golf club from his hands, leading Dougal to comment: "He looks like a trophy".
It turns out that he hero-worships Ted and once drew a portrait of the two of them together, which features in subsequent episodes appearing on the living room mantle.
He talks constantly in an annoying high-pitched voice about the most trivial and irritating topics, including central heating, insurance and "favourite humming noises".
Purcell keeps talking even when no one is listening, at one point striking up a conversation with a sofa coverlet embroidered with Jesus' face: "Ah, it's yourself!".
His unpleasant habits, in which he engages solely for his own amusement, include: Stack's visit is abruptly cut short when he too contracts Hairy Hands Syndrome from sitting in Jack's chair.
An attempt to get him to write his name fails, with Unctious claiming he once fell while running with scissors, completely severing the nerve that controls handwriting.
