List of Father Ted characters

Father Ted Crilly 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. He is later transferred to a comfortable Dublin parish, only to soon be sent straight back to Craggy Island after a church accountant discovers irregularities in his church expenses claims. Father Dougal McGuire Father Dougal McGuire, played by Ardal O'Hanlon, is a childlike, simple-minded Catholic priest exiled as punishment for "the Blackrock incident". It is unclear how he entered the priesthood, or indeed why he is a priest as he seems to have no religious beliefs whatsoever. (Ted asks him, "Dougal, how did you get into the church? Was it, like, collect 12 crisp packets and become a priest?"). In episode 6 of series 1, we find out that Dougal lost his two parents and his uncle while giving the last rites. Father Jack Hackett • Priest }} }} 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". He usually shouts whenever he speaks, although he speaks in a much calmer tone when offered alcohol. He is also capable of identifying a bottle of wine, as well as its vintage, just from the sound of the bottle clinking. 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. In "Tentacles of Doom", with the promise of more "drink", Ted trains Jack to say "That would be an ecumenical matter!" and "Yes!" so that he may convincingly circumvent any questions put to him by a party of visiting bishops. Jack has a fear of nuns; in the episode "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading", upon seeing Sister Assumpta and learning that she is a nun, he runs screaming out of the window. He regards the sick and poor with contempt, referring to them as a "shower of bastards". 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". Jack can be violent. For example, in "The Passion of Saint Tibulus", when Bishop Brennan wakes him up, Jack punches him in the face while shouting "Feck off!", while in the episode "The Mainland", Jack is arrested for assaulting and hospitalising a man he had met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting he'd accidentally attended, after the man saw him in a pub and tried to stop him from drinking. He is also shown to have a habit of destroying the television by throwing bottles containing alcohol at it and blowing it up, leading to Ted telling Dougal not to turn the television on when Jack is sleeping in the room. Although Jack is an alcoholic, his drinking is not limited to alcohol; he will drink almost any liquid he can get his hands on, except for water or tea, which he despises. 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 has very bad personal hygiene. This is evident from his unkempt hair, scabs near his mouth, stains on his clerical collar and decaying teeth. His chair also has a large stain behind his head. Ted once panicked when he thought that the time of the year for Jack's bath was approaching, however, to Ted's utmost relief, he remembers it had been performed over six months prior. 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". Jack once locked Father Jessup in his underpants hamper, where Jessup was tormented by the extreme smell. Mrs Doyle wears a helmet when clipping Jack's nails, as does everyone else in the room. Jack is usually in his chair, often sleeping, and is rarely active. 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. When he has to be brought out of his chair, he usually has to be put in a wheelchair, which is generally pushed by someone else. He has a walking stick with him when he is in his chair, although he is able to walk (and even run) without it. Jack is prone to hearing loss caused by a build-up of wax in his ears, which the other priests use to make candles. However, he is shown to be able to hear just fine when Ted offers him a glass of brandy. He also has a cataract in his left eye. In the episode "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading", Ted observes that Jack has not been properly sober for 12 years. When he briefly awakens from his drunken state, Ted having made him give up alcohol for Lent, he is startled to find that Dougal and Ted are the only ones in the room with him, demanding "Where are the other two?", suggesting he usually sees double. Soon afterwards, he realises to his horror that he is "still on that feckin' island". 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. It is also stated that before he became a priest, Hackett had many varied careers, including captaining a ship. Mrs Doyle • Housekeeper }} }} Mrs Doyle, played by Pauline McLynn, is the parish priests' housekeeper. Her first name is not mentioned on the show, but is given as Joan in the draft Competition Time script. Whenever a character speaks her first name, background noise suddenly erupts, masking whatever is being said. This gag was repeated in Tedfest 2007 when Graham Linehan was going to reveal her first name in a transmission but his voice was masked by the sound of breaking glass. 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'. Mrs Doyle is a hyperactive, repressed and somewhat insane parish housekeeper with an over-the-top zeal for her work. Obsessed with refreshments, she is often to be found preparing copious amounts of tea, cake and sandwiches; she disdained an automated tea-making machine, stating that she "liked the misery" of making tea, and was devastated when Ted bought her one for Christmas. She eventually destroyed it and convinced Ted that she was the right person for making tea. She even stays up all night "just in case one of you needs a cup of tea!" 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. Sometimes, she then denies them the offered item(s). In the episode Hell, when Ted finally gives in, she concludes that she is forcing him to have a cake, and tells him that he should "just say no" (which he had done repeatedly), calling it a "word that Our Lord gave us to use when we didn't want any cake". She then proceeds to have the cakes destroyed. 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. In this respect, Ted takes advantage of her work ethic and treats her like a general dogsbody. She frequently suffers accidents while attending to these chores, such as falling off the roof, falling down the stairs and especially plummeting head-first out of the large window frame in the front room. Little or nothing is known about her personal life except that she must have been married at some point and previously spoke of having a sister. She has a dim view of sex, once mentioning how thankful she is that "she never thinks about that sort of thing", and in this respect appears quite conservative. In "And God Created Woman", when she and Ted are discussing the work of novelist Polly Clarke, she laments how much swearing there is in modern fiction and goes on a rant about the amount of sex in Clarke's books. She also becomes spiteful, condescending and visibly jealous whenever another woman comes into the parochial house, especially those who are good-looking or command the attention of the priests. She has women friends on the island who appear sporadically throughout the series, and who all look and dress in a fairly similar fashion to herself and speak in much the same manner. In the episode "The Mainland", she is arrested for getting into a fight in a tearoom. Graham Linehan has stated that he always thought Mrs Doyle originally met Father Ted by winning the Lovely Girls competition. ==Supporting characters==