Father Noel Furlong
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| Father Noel Furlong | |
|---|---|
 Father Noel Furlong in "Hell". |
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| First appearance | "Hell" |
| Last appearance | "The Mainland" |
| Portrayed by | Graham Norton |
| Information | |
| Occupation | Priest |
Father Noel Furlong is a recurring character in the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted. He is portrayed by Graham Norton. He appears in three episodes of the show. In series two he appears in the episodes "Hell" and "Flight into Terror", while in series three he appears in "The Mainland" .
Father Noel is a very annoying and slightly hyperactive priest whom Ted and Dougal hate spending time with. He runs the St. Luke's Youth Group and is first encountered during Ted's abortive caravaning holiday to "Hell". 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. Noel pokes fun at Ted and Dougal for having strong bladders by comparing them to "a bunch of camels". He regales the helpless Ted and Dougal (to whom he takes an instant dislike when, after much forceful prompting from Noel, the hapless priest guesses his age to be forty) with tales of how members of the youth group have a habit of turning in late (ten past eleven, Tony Lynch) and succeeds in driving them out of their holiday home. Father Furlong makes constant inappropriate jokes about the youth group, suggesting, for example, that young Tony Lynch was going off to get some heroin. The youngsters seem used to this behaviour but, in a later episode, they run off to Paraguay to escape him.
Father Noel is also known for his rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and turns up again on the "Flight into Terror" leading Father Fay and Dougal into the cockpit of a plane. While there he inadvertently causes disaster when he allows Father Fay, who doesn't know he's a priest, to see his reflection. Father Fay goes crazy and jumps on the pilot sending the plane out of its path. The pilot screams at the watching Dougal to press the emergency button. The bumbling priest then presses the wrong button. This grave error results in one of the fuel tanks being emptied.
His boundless energy results in him getting his group lost in the "Very Dark Caves" on "The Mainland" and a "screeching competition" causes him to be crushed by falling rocks. (His group then abandon him and head to Paraguay on Aer Lingus flights).
In "Night of the Nearly Dead", Ted mentions to Dougal that "Father Noel" has been involved in a gas explosion, leaving him recognisable by only his dental records. Whether this refers to Noel Furlong is unclear.
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