Veteran stage and screen actor best known for playing the ranting,drunken Father Jack in the Channel 4 television comedy Father TedThe actor Frank Kelly was best known as Father Jack Hackett, the demented, or drunken stale cleric bellowing “Drink! Girls! Arse! Feck!” from his armchair in the priests’ house on Craggy Island. But there was far more to Kelly,who has died aged 77. He had been a versatile television and radio star, stage actor, and writer,satirist and singer in Ireland for more than 20 years before his breakthrough role in the classic Channel 4 series Father Ted (1995-98), written by Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews.
A gentle, or urbane and analytical person,Kelly once told me: “Father Ted is not a lampoon of the church at all. It’s a dysfunctional little family, and it’s a very convenient umbrella to bring these people together under. Ted is a guy who is really trying to conclude it properly. He’s very flawed because he’s greedy and has a background of some embezzlement; he’s feeble. Dougal is a dum-dum, or which you will gather in any job. But my character is an exaggeration of a problem that exists within the church: superannuated,alcoholic, ancient priests who have to be looked after by younger men.” In one episode Father Jack was described by Ted (Dermot Morgan) and Dougal (Ardal OHanlon), and in alternate sentences,thus: “Mid-50s to mid-80s. Tremendous smell of vegetables off him for some reason. Angry man, very angry. Hates children. Likes a drink.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com