After everyone has left and they are no closer to an answer, Annie realises that one person did not come to the dinner, so Jackie pays a late-night visit to the only absentee: the reclusive Ned Devine.

He finds Ned in his home in front of the TV, still holding the ticket in his hand, a smile on his face and dead from shock.

Finn is convinced they belong together, as he thinks he is the father of her son Maurice, but she cannot abide him due to his ever-present odour of pigs.

Jackie delays Jim by taking him on a circuitous route while Michael races to the cottage on a motorcycle, completely naked, and breaks in so he can answer the door as Ned.

After discovering that the lottery winnings are far greater than they anticipated (totaling nearly IR£7 million), Jackie and Michael are forced to involve the entire village in fooling Mr. Kelly.

Jones originally developed the idea for Waking Ned as a roughly 10-minute short film, but later expanded the work into a full-length script.

When the film was finished, we put it in the boot of a car and drove to Cannes where we screened it and sold it to Fox Searchlight in the US, where it was released later that year.

The site's consensus reads: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times lauded the film as "another one of those delightful village comedies that seem to spin out of the British isles annually".

He added, "Waking Ned Devine can take its place alongside Local Hero, Comfort and Joy, The Snapper, The Van, The Full Monty, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, Brassed Off, Eat the Peach and many others.