Spewing outbursts such as “feck off,” “arse” and “girls”, the actor Frank Kelly did not have to worry about learning his lines as he became a cult hero of television comedy in the 1990s in the controversial Irish series Father Ted.
As the catatonic, lecherous, drunk and dishevelled Father Jack, Kelly became an essential element of the show that dared to satirise the church in Ireland and demonstrate how ridiculous it was to consider the institution — as many still did — above criticism.
The surreal comedy, broadcast on Channel 4 from 1995 to 1998, gave gently mirthful expression to the growing mood of anti-clericalism in the Irish Republic. It featured the exploits of three dysfunctional priests and their housekeeper on the imaginary Craggy Island: the financially corrupt and sexually corruptible Father Ted Crilly (played by Dermot Morgan), the childlike simpleton Father Dougal McGuire (Ardal O’Hanlon), the manic and overbearing Mrs Doyle (Pauline McLynn), and the abominable drunk, Father Jack — forever parked in his tatty old chair and with unexplained crustations peeling off his skin. His make-up took two hours to apply and included oatmeal and glue.
The demented cleric became his signature role. “When people see me, they shout, ‘Drink!’, ‘Feck!’ and ‘Girls!’ all the time,” Kelly later recalled. “I don’t go to the newsagents when the big school empties out — you can’t cope with 50 people shouting at you at once.” However, he was resigned to his celebrity. “I get a grim satisfaction from it, because if I were a manufacturer and people kept mentioning my brand I’d be bloody delighted.”
Francis Kelly was born in Dublin in 1938 into a family in which acting played a prominent part. His father, Charles E Kelly, was an amateur actor and a devout Roman Catholic, who would never miss the nightly family recital of the Rosary.
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The young Frank attended Dublin’s Blackrock College, which he recalled as “detestable”. As a natural performer, blessed with a fine soprano voice, he often played female roles with the seniors, and received taunts from fellow pupils. He settled such affronts in back alleys with his bare fists. He went on to attend University College Dublin, where he studied law, and rediscovered the stage. Earning a living as a sub-editor,he appeared in pantomime, tours, summer revues and had a minor part in the film The Italian Job (1969).
He had an unlikely musical hit in 1983 with Christmas Countdown, a spoof of The Twelve Days of Christmas, which reached the UK chart. He performed on Top of the Pops and received a letter from the Queen, in which she wrote how the record had given her “great pleasure”.
He was short of work when he landed the role of Father Jack. Although Channel 4 was initially wary of taking on a comedy about priests, Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan’s Father Ted for Hat Trick Productions proved a success. The characterisation was over-the-top — Kelly’s Father Jack was not content to imbibe brandy, but would also take to drinking floor polish, brake fluid, Castrol GTX and even Toilet Duck. Kelly said that he never received a cross word from any Catholic priests. He was himself a practising Roman Catholic (and moderate when it came to drink too). He married Bairbre Neldon in 1964 — they met at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre. She survives him with their seven children, Aideen, Fiona, Jayne, Ruth, Emmet, Stephen, and Rachel, who between them produced 17 grandchildren.
He had no time for those who deliberately sought to derive offence from Father Ted. When the show came to an end after the premature death of Dermot Morgan in 1998 he continued to work on stage and featured in advertisements. He also undertook many one-man shows and played the fiddle.
Kelly could be serious and blunt, yet kind-hearted and sensitive at the same time. He remained in his native south Dublin. In September 2007 he had a cancerous tumour removed from his bowel. It was the only time he was positively not in the mood to have “feck”, “arse” and “drink” shouted at him by fellow patients and hospital staff.
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Frank Kelly, actor, was born on December 28, 1938. He died on February 28, 2016, aged 77