Ardal O'Hanlon on life after Father Ted

Most people, of course.

When pushed for another veritable man of the cloth, Father Dougal McGuire, Ted’s bemused and simple foil, would surely be the one.

The fictional Roman Catholic priests – along with the heavy-drinking Father Jack Hackett – might have irked a few members in the real church, but the series which aired on Channel 4 in the 1990s remains a cult favourite.

Ardal O’Hanlon had the task of bumbling around Craggy Island as Father Dougal. Father Ted co-writer Graham Linehan said Dougal had the wide-eyed quality of Woody from Cheers, and the complete stupidity of Trigger from Only Fools And Horses.

O’Hanlon can’t believe he’s still talking about the character 15 years on.

“I just didn’t think people would be interested in three weird priests in Ireland. I thought it was very funny all right, but I didn’t think it would be popular. I didn’t think it would work.”

Linehan and his co-writer Arthur Mathews’ material was ferociously good. So good, in fact, they made the actors stick to the script.

“In some ways you do have a big input: you bring your whole experience of being a comic – your instincts, your personality, your face – but in terms of the lines, it was very heavily scripted by the two lads.”

O’Hanlon remembers being on set could be difficult.

“We found it very hard to keep a straight face doing that,” he laughs.

A bigger challenge was dealing with the pressure to tour on the back of Father Ted’s success.

O’Hanlon had been given the part in Father Ted fairly soon after moving to London from Dublin. He was a circuit comic with no designs on a television career. Succeeding in the casting was “just a lucky break, really, and I wasn’t expecting the show to be the hit it was”.

When the show finished he had to make the most of his newfound profile and go on tour.

“You were expected to go out on the back of it even though you might not be ready, and because you were busy doing TV, you wouldn’t have time to prepare properly, so I was sometimes unprepared and I regretted that.”

O’Hanlon is in Edinburgh when we talk. He is doing a week-long run at the Assembly Rooms. He picks out Brett Goldstein and his show about internet porn as a highlight. He values it because it is considered and heartfelt, thought-provoking and well-executed.

Those adjectives could describe O’Hanlon. He’s at a point of self-assessment. He’s approaching 50 (he’s 47), and reflective.

“I’m enjoying stand-up in a way I didn’t ten years ago. I’m not as neurotic as I was. I felt a real weight of expectation on the back of Father Ted, and sometimes I found that difficult. “There were a few years in my stand-up career where I was never quite ready and I was always trying to play catch-up.”

He’s back on stage now for the “right reasons”. He’s found a voice he is “happy with”. It parallels his experience as a young comic, fresh out of University College Dublin in the 1980s, when he and two college friends, Barry Murphy and Kevin Gildea, launched an Irish version of London’s Comedy Store.

The Comedy Cellar at The International Bar in Wicklow Street has become the spiritual home of alternative Irish comedy. It launched the careers of Dara Ó Briain, Jason Byrne, Dylan Moran and Andrew Maxwell.

“We didn’t have any great ambitions or any clue as to what to do with ourselves after college,” he explains. “While we were there we joined the debating society with the sole purpose of amusing ourselves, and we got a taste for it there.”

He was shy, though. “It was a big leap for me to get up in front of people and try to be funny, but it kind of worked. I got a great thrill out of that and so we said, ‘Let’s do something, let’s try to recreate The Comedy Store in Dublin’.”

After five years the boys passed it on to the next generation, who in turn did the same. It continues today with the same original spirit: “It’s a help centre for comedians, not too laddish, not too brash... a place for quirky comedy.”

O’Hanlon admits the nerves rarely go away. It’s part of the reason he’s stopped reading reviews, especially if a new show is in its early stages and you are “facing the bullet”.

“I absolutely don’t read them. I just don’t. It’s such a distraction. You can get very upset. Even the good ones can upset you. You think they might have missed the point or misquoted you.”

Starring roles

O’Hanlon wanted to be a footballer when he was young. He supported Leeds United – “maybe because they wore white, were defiant and not liked by everyone else” – and it was his love of the beautiful game that caused him to find his way on to TV.

He made a documentary called Leagues Apart, going to big derby matches in Europe, trying to find out why people pick one side or another. A colourful travelogue looking at tribal lines.

“Like most children, I wanted to be a footballer when I grew up. I often think comedians have a bit of that – performing, showing off, pleasing the audience, but with less money…”

He starred as a superhero from planet Ultron living in suburbia in My Hero for five years, and has had bit parts in Doctor Who, Skins and the film The Adventures Of Greyfriars Bobby.

He likes offbeat comedy but has a mainstream audience and much of his current material deals with ideas such as religion, which touches everything in Ireland.

O’Hanlon grew up near Dublin in a Catholic family. They’d take family holidays to the Catholic shrine in France, Lourdes, and do the rosary every night before school.

“It’s always there. That Catholic baggage never goes away. Once you’ve been steeped in that it informs every decision you make.

“You lose your religion as you get older but it never goes away.”

When he started in comedy he tried to do lots of funny lines. Now he bases more on real experience.

“I touch on my childhood which was strict but not in a bad way. We were sheltered.

“These are all reasons why I am doing comedy and that is where I am coming from at the moment, as well as dealing with needing something to believe in, such as sport.”

One thing that prompted this view is an Irish TV special of Who Do You Think You Are? which aired a few years back.

O’Hanlon’s grandfather was part of a select band of men picked by the chief intelligence officer for the IRA at the time, Michael Collins, to break British intelligence through whatever means possible.

“It was a hugely important period in Irish history. I found it amazing that he was an 18-year-old medical student, a quiet but patriotic and modest man.”

He never spoke about his experience. He was interned in a concentration camp during the Irish civil war, sentenced to death, but tunnelled out with a spoon.

Later he immigrated to England and became a doctor, settled in Shrewsbury, then returned to join the regular Irish army as a doctor.

“It’s extraordinary, but I guess it was typical of a lot of people of that generation. In Britain you had the Second World War – people have lived extraordinary lives. It makes you realise how lucky we are nowadays.”