A MOUSTACHIOED priest is told he can’t bring golf clubs into the venue. A velvet robed bishop purchases a round of drinks. A lovely girl walks daintily to her seat. Father Damo, aka Joe Rooney, is compering a sold-out Father Ted-themed table quiz in Dublin’s Laughter Lounge last night in aid of the housing charity Threshold. It’s preceded by stand-up sets from himself and fellow Ted-alumnus Patrick McDonnell.
“‘Who do you prefer, Blur or Oasis?’ I still get that all of the time,” says Rooney, referring to his character’s obsession with mid-90s Britpop. “It’s nearly bigger than before.”
Which explains why the whole parish was there last night: priests, bishops and lovely girls.
“I’ve been to Tedfest,” says Gary O’Reilly, unavoidably glowering with his marker-created monobrow. “On Friday I dressed like Father Damo, Saturday Father Ted and Sunday Father Dougal.”
“Like all the best comedies it gets better with age,” says Drimnagh-born Joseph Lennon.
His friend Eanna Kavanagh is wearing an impressive “Dreams/Reality” T-shirt (a reference to the first episode) but it’s nothing compared to the Chris the Sheep T-shirts made by Marian McDonald for her “Team Lambchop”. These feature plastic sheep heads, woolly bodies and Polaroids on the back documenting Chris’s progress from sickness to health (the dramatic arc of an episode called Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep).
“We’ve been studying all day,” says her friend Marie McLoughlin. They’ve been preparing for rounds with titles like My Lovely Horse and The Money was Just Resting in My Account.
“Tedheads are like Trekkies now,” says Rooney. “I first noticed the phenomenon when me and Patrick McDonnell did a show in Edinburgh called Further Ted and a busload of them turned up… And I was in the Aran Islands and down in Ennistymon where the programme was shot and there were loads of people there looking at the house – people who must have been very young when the show originally went out.”
TED FACTS: TEST YOURSELF
A What song does Father Noel Furlong sing in the Ailwee caves?
B What drink does Dougal ask for when he tries to order a bag of chips at the Garda station?
C What present does Fr Hernandez get Dougal?
Answers
A Bohemian Rhapsody B Fanta C VCR (he gives Ted a Cuban fertility symbol)
