Want to know why we all fell out of love with Mrs Doyle? Read on, read on, read on...
THIS week 20 years ago, we lost the comic genius Dermot Morgan. He died just a few days after filming wrapped on the last episode of ‘Father Ted’, the show for which many of us of a certain age most remember him.
It is difficult to think of a TV series that has ingrained itself so deeply into our collective cultural psyche. It is almost two decades since the final episode first aired, yet its catchphrases and one-liners still trip off the tongue of Irish people, both young and old.
When financial impropriety is alluded to, we quip: “The money was just resting in my account.”
When we want to feign gormlessness, a wide-eyed “That’s mad, Ted” usually does the trick.
And who doesn’t relish the opportunity to work talk of bovines and perspective into a conversation?
It was nice to see the show’s references being used for what I imagine was their original purpose, to poke fun at the Establishment. At the recent March for Choice, some of those giving the best ‘signage’ paid tribute to the Channel 4 show.
But it has become much more than a lexical plaything. Our love of the show quickly gave birth to its very own festival.
Every year since 2007, diehard fans have been flocking to a Craggy Island stand-in off the Galway coast to indulge their love of all things Ted.
But there is one of the show’s characters whose tea-related banter has fallen out of favour.
Too obvious or perhaps suffering from over-use, put-upon housekeeper Mrs Doyle’s imploring cry of “Go on, go on, go on” has died a bit of a death here.
In Britain, however, they still can’t get enough of the character so brilliantly brought to life by Pauline McLynn.
Indeed, Mrs Doyle has planted herself so firmly in Brtiain’s cultural consciousness that theatre reviewers have been accused of lazily likening too many Irish actors’ performances to the pinnie-wearing housekeeper. Kilkenny-born actor and UCC graduate Jessica Regan recently took issue with a review in theatre publication ‘The Stage’, which described her performance in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ as her “best Mrs Doyle impression”. Regan, currently on stage at London’s Wyndham Theatre, said the buxom Irish maid she plays “shares neither age, gait, posture, mannerisms, cadence, accent nor era with Mrs Doyle” and that all they have in common is that “we are both Irish and female and carry trays from time to time”. “It was a lazy, troubling comparison,” she wrote in an article in ‘The Stage’ in response to its review, adding: “I did not bring Mrs Doyle to the play. The reviewer did.”
As an Irish person living in Britain, Jessica is also sick of the frequent Mrs Doyle impressions that she encounters in her everyday life. “I could do with less of that as well,” she writes.
It seems that we have abandoned Mrs Doyle for exactly the same reason that people across the Irish Sea so fervently cling on to her; that while brilliantly played, the character was never really more than a onedimensional stereotype.
It is also the reason why many of us have failed to see the attraction of Brendan O’Carroll’s ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’, which continues to enjoy a staggeringly loyal following in Britain.
So it has been nice to see that Irish-written shows, like the stupendous ‘Derry Girls’ and the good – if not quite as belly-laugh-inducing – ‘Young Offenders’, are being embraced by viewers and critics on both side of the Irish Sea.
Dermot Morgan, I’m sure, would roundly approve of this rich new comedy vein being mercilessly tapped.
IN the spirit of not making unnecessary journeys, I am writing this column from the cosy confines of the two-by-three-metre box we generously refer to as “the office”. It’s a bit like the way we’ve named the under-stairs cubby hole where we stash our €10 bottles of plonk “the cellar”. Still, these spaces have really come into their own in the kind of code-red situation that we find ourselves in this week.
Of course, it’s not just me making use of the office (ahem) today. All around the country, people are working from home, kept from work by this so-called ‘Red Alert’.
Excuse my scepticism, but we Donegal folk cannot get our heads around the over-reaction to a bit of inclement weather. However, at the time of writing, I am told that peak snowmageddon is still a few hours away, so I may well soften my stance and end up having to eat my thermal-lined beanie.
Nevertheless, my nordie bravado did not stop me buying into yesterday’s national trolley-dash frenzy.
I left the office to pick up a sandwich and came back with enough tinned goods and frozen pizzas to keep us going until Christmas – as well as the obligatory loaf of bread.
I also felt the need to join my neighbours this afternoon in the final-final dash to the local Spar for yet another litre of milk and the obligatory emergency packet of Malteasers.
Post-snowmageddon detox, anyone?