Our comedy FATHER
It’s 20 years since the death of Dermot Morgan and he is still celebrated as one of our greatest talents. Here a long-term fan reveals why the Dubliner has such a place in our hearts
FIRST things first. Let me hold up my hands and admit that my powers of recall aren’t quite what they used to be. Even if they were, though, I can say with some certainty that I wouldn’t have remembered March 6, 1998 being a Friday.
It is only because I went to the trouble of checking that I know that now. But my memory needs no refreshing when it come to remembering that it was a funny sort of day. Not funny ha-ha, though, but funny peculiar.
Even though I’d already been around the block as a newspaper reporter back then, I felt slightly uncomfortable covering Dermot Morgan’s funeral. I’d encountered him in passing on a couple of occasions, although I certainly couldn’t say that I knew him at all. But we did have a few things in common.
We had both attended the same Christian Brothers school in Dublin, albeit a decade and a half or so apart. I’d also made my Confirmation — as, almost certainly, had he — in the very church where the final obsequies were heard. It ran a bit deeper than those incidental factors, though.
Myself and Dermot had a number of mutual friends, including some who were pivotal to the entire Father Ted project. So, yes, it seemed slightly odd to be there with a notebook and pen in hand when people I knew well were gathering to say goodbye to a pal.
Various other things stick in my mind about that overcast and bitterly cold day. Perhaps the main one, though, is the handwritten note attached to flowers sent by Hat Trick Productions, the independent television company that brought Father Ted to our screens. ‘Dermot, your unique legacy means you will never be forgotten,’ it read. ‘God bless.’
I’d quoted that tribute in my report at the time and, all these years later, was pretty sure I could remember it word for word. Not far wrong, in fairness. When I checked the archives the other day, I had it down almost verbatim.
Any casual observer would have been forgiven for thinking that Hat Trick’s sentiments sounded fanciful or even verging on the grandiose. The plain truth is that Dermot Morgan left a relatively slim body of work behind him and, by any reckoning, not all of it was of the very highest calibre.
Nor, for that matter, is he alone in the pantheon of Irish comedy greats. Before and since, many others — from Jimmy O’Dea and Maureen Potter to Dara Ó Briain and Sharon Horgan, via the likes of Dave Allen and Sean Hughes — have blazed an impressive trail of their own.
But do any of these individuals have something like The Jester’s Chair, a tall and eye-catching bronze sculpture, erected in their memory in such a prestigious location as the capital’s Merrion Square Park? Not to the best of my knowledge. What’s more, Dermot received the honour just four years after his death.
AS the 20th anniversary of Dermot Morgan’s untimely passing arrived this week, it was more abundantly obvious than ever that Hat Trick got it right. He certainly hasn’t been forgotten and nor is there any prospect of that happening any time soon.
Of course, there are all sorts of reasons why he continues to be remembered with such fondness. That he died at just 45 — and with three sons ranging in age from 19 to just four — is one factor.
So too is the fact that he was at the peak of his career, having achieved international success following some difficult years and a famously fractious relationship with RTÉ. Granted, there is also kudos because of his status as a maverick, an iconoclast and an outsider unafraid to bite the hand that was feeding him.
But there was more to it than that. Plenty of successful people die young, overcome adversity or stick up two fingers at the powers-that-be; few, if any, are remembered with the affection that Dermot Morgan is.
Due to timing among other reasons, it would be easy to suggest that the widespread acclaim for Father Ted has been the principal trigger behind his enduring popularity.
But my theory is that we need to rewind a little further to the days when Morgan ruled the radio airwaves. Nearly 30 years on, it is difficult to describe to anyone who wasn’t around at the time just how radical and daring Scrap Saturday really was. But it is hardly an exaggeration to say that missing those 11am programmes meant a one-way ticket to social Siberia for the week ahead. Not knowing what had been on the show immediately left you out of the loop.
Among its regular targets were high-profile politicians such as Pádraig Flynn, Michael Noonan, Gerry Collins and future president Michael D. Higgins, then a Labour TD. Others who frequently found themselves skewered on the sharp end of its rapier-like wit included Eamon Dunphy, Gay Byrne and Mike Murphy.
But the most notorious figure in the show’s revolving cast of characters was Charles J. Haughey, who was, of course, the serving taoiseach during its entire run from 1989 to 1991. Morgan portrayed him as a scheming Godfather-like figure with delusions of grandeur, a lavish lifestyle and a very colourful personal life.
FOR anyone who knew even a little about the real Haughey, it was very close to the bone. The scripts were always highly topical. Only years later would we learn that they were even more accurate than most of us could have dreamed. The times need to be put in context. It would be an understatement to say that Haughey in his pomp was not someone to be trifled with. Here was an overbearing leader who ruled Fianna Fáil with an iron fist.
He dealt with political adversaries in the most ruthless terms imaginable and, as it later emerged, was at the very least complicit in the tapping of journalists’ phones. Even his closest aide, the late PJ Mara, jokingly likened him to the fascist dictator Mussolini. At least it seemed to be a joke.
Against that backdrop, he was a man that few were willing to take on. But Morgan nonetheless chose to ridicule him week after week in a show that quickly became mandatory listening in establishment circles.
It is no exaggeration to describe it as groundbreaking stuff. Even if it hadn’t been remotely amusing, it would still had been a revolutionary exercise. Best of all, though, it turned out to be consistently hilarious and the funniest bits were the weekly sketches involving Haughey and Mara.
No one had heard the likes of it before. True, the satirical TV series Hall’s Pictorial Weekly had mined a broadly similar vein as far back as the 1970s. But whereas it lampooned parish pump politics and conniving county councillors in the broadest of brushstrokes, Scrap Saturday went for the jugular in very specific terms.
It also arguably changed the entire way in which we view the political elite. Haughey, a domineering tyrant who liked calling the shots, was now being openly mocked in the nation’s kitchens and front rooms every weekend.
It is difficult to imagine him taking it all lightly. No amount of fine wines and Charvet shirts are likely to make up for that sort of humiliation. Yet Fiona Clarke, Morgan’s partner and mother of his youngest son, has said she thinks Haughey ‘quite liked’ the characterisation.
Perhaps she was right. Equally, though, it is hard to avoid the mental
image of a livid Haughey — impotent with rage — pacing the floors of Abbeville and swearing vengeance on his chief tormentor. Either way, Scrap Saturday was a game-changer for Ireland in terms of how we look at our elected representatives.
Yet it was Father Ted that brought Morgan to a wider audience. It turned him into a star, made him wealthy and looked like a springboard to even greater things.
Unlike many successful shows of the genre, it was a critical as well as a commercial success. It has been cited as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time. Even today, the show is celebrated at annual festivals both here and abroad.
When the first episode was aired on Channel 4 in the spring of 1995, the likes of the Bishop Casey affair had already led to a serious weakening of the Catholic Church’s supremacy in this country. But the full horror of the clerical sex abuse scandals had yet to emerge.
Against that backdrop, a comedy about a group of mis-matched priests exiled on a remote island off the west coast chimed perfectly with the public mood. It wasn’t the first time the clergy had been held up to ridicule; the difference was that it had never been seen by a mass audience in Ireland before.
Although the Dublin-born comic and satirist Dave Allen had been taking sideswipes at the Church for years, his BBC programmes were only available to a minority of viewers here at the time.
But not only could Father Ted be seen by anyone who had a television, it also captured the prevailing mood. It was a religious sitcom that could be enjoyed by believers and non-believers alike. Yet it was only nominally about Catholicism: it was as much to do with the paradoxes and idiosyncrasies that come as part and parcel of being Irish.
But, with Ireland moving slowly towards a post-clerical era, there was something else about Father Ted. Its gentle, often surreal humour made it practically impossible for anyone to take offence.
The same goes for Morgan’s affectionate portrayal of the central character, a wily Everyman who isn’t quite as clever as he’d like to think he is. For my money, Scrap Saturday remains his crowning glory. But Father Ted comes a very close second, not least for its completely different tone and delivery.
Timing is everything. Nowhere is this more the case than in comedy. And Dermot Morgan was the right man in the right place at the right time.
Not once, but twice.