Father Ted Crilly
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Father Ted Crilly is the central character in the Irish Channel 4 situation comedy series Father Ted played by the late Dermot Morgan.
Father Ted is one of three priests who have been exiled to the remote Craggy Island by the corrupt and dictatorial Bishop Len Brennan. Taught at a seminary known as St. Columb's, Ted is definitely the most normal of the priests on the island. He is a bon vivant, exiled to Craggy Island for something referred to only as "that Lourdes thing." This apparently involved his misappropriating church funds intended to be used to send a poor child to Lourdes in order to go on a gambling spree to Las Vegas. Ted has frequently claimed that the money was "just resting in my account." Ted was previously in Wexford, which happens to be the home town of the series producer, Declan Lowney. He has a brother who is a doctor. Another trademark of Ted's is when visitors to the island or old friends repeatedly bring up the mention of him having a load of thick, downy fluff growing over his bottom. Ted publicly announced, by mistake, on a plane that he found it impossible to remove the hair as no razor is strong enough to shave it.
Ted reflects in an unthinking manner the prejudices and hypocrisies of his social and religious position. Ted dreams of being on television or of leaving the island and becoming a wealthy priest in a parish in Las Vegas, living it up in a casino somewhere. However, Ted's failings just make him more human, and he is a somewhat sympathetic character, hard put upon by the other two priests, the childlike and idiotic Father Dougal McGuire and Father Jack Hackett, a misanthropic and violent drunk. He sometimes displays moments of selfless heroism e.g. on a plane about to crash, solving the mystery of the Beast of Craggy Island, leading a troop of lost priests in Ireland's largest lingerie department and stopping a fellow priest from committing suicide. Although Ted would love to be thought of like this normally, often the joke is that he was only doing such things for some small thing he would get out of it, such as the fact that the priest about to commit suicide owed him £20, though in the end Ted let him have it anyway.
His most notable achievement was winning the "Golden Cleric" award, with which he was presented in recognition of his quick thinking in the aforementioned lingerie incident. The award resembled an Oscar statuette in the shape of a priest. During the prelude of the first episode of the third series he was portrayed as having moved to the lavish Castlelawn Parochial House in Dublin and being finally on the way to achieving his ambitions, as a result of winning his award. However, some of his expense claims on the accounts of his new parish were challenged, so he was sent back to Craggy Island.
Ted is victorious, with some help from Dougal and Jack, in the Craggy Island version of Stars in Their Eyes, where he appeared as Elvis. Previously however, Ted is known to have come last in the competition for dressing as Mother Teresa. Dougal offered a disconsolate Ted some sympathy; "there's only one Mother Teresa, and that's you, Ted!"
Father Ted maintains a long-standing feud with Father Dick Byrne. It is unknown how the feud started, but Dougal once mentioned a "Scrabble fiasco" (where Father Byrne managed to get all of his words to spell "Useless priest can't say mass"). This feud has led Ted into various ill-judged escapades, including once aiming to win the nomination to represent Ireland in "Eurosong '96" (a spoof of the Eurovision Song Contest) with Father Dougal for their composition "My Lovely Horse". He also lost a bet with Father Dick Byrne after cheating in the Annual All-Priests Over 75's Indoor Football Challenge Match and as a forfeit he had to "kick Bishop Brennan up the arse".
On the orders of Bishop Brennan Ted also tried to have the blasphemous film The Passion of Saint Tibulus banned on the island, where, unlike the mainland, it remained open to public cinema viewing due to a "loophole". Far from destroying the film's commercial appeal, however, his inspired protests (including waving signs such as "Down With This Sort of Thing" and "Careful Now") actually caused people to come from as far away as Gdańsk to watch it.
[edit] Trivia
- Ted drives what Dougal once called "a crappy blue Ford Cortina", although in earlier episodes, he is seen driving a Ford Escort Mk3.
