PROUD DAD WHO LIVES ON IN TED

TWO of the actor’s siblings followed their father into the carpentry trade, but Dunbar is, by his own admission, ‘useless’ with his hands.

He was in england when, aged 21, his father, who was working as a foreman for a construction company, died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage.

Dunbar dashed home, but didn’t make it in time to say goodbye, which cast a shadow over him for years to come.

‘I was the firstborn and he was very proud of me, but he was never able to tell me that,’ he said in a 2004 interview.

‘There was always friction between us, but now I realise it was born, in part, out of the stress he was under.

‘Yet I never managed to have even one conversation with my father. I didn’t have a relationship with him at all.’

The actor’s younger brother returned to enniskillen to help support his mother and the five youngest siblings so Dunbar could stay at drama school, for which he remains forever grateful. His late father was a source of inspiration for his role as Hastings — in the shape of the character’s ‘Hastings-isms’ (‘I am calm! I am bloody calm!’).

‘Those were phrases that my father used,’ said Dunbar. His use of the word ‘fella’, meanwhile, has sparked its own pub game (pints sunk when Hastings deploys the word).

‘There was a cabbie today that said: “All right, see you later, fella.” everybody’s on it. It’s so funny, but it’s great.’