Celebrating Ted Fest on the island of Inis Mor. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty
Sitcoms come and sitcoms go; few are mourned. Still, a select number are celebrated years after their demise. Almost 10 years have passed since its final episode, but Father Ted's brethren are as fervent as ever. Tickets for the annual Ted Fest, The Friends of Father Ted Festival, sold out in just 30 minutes this week, and it makes you wonder just what it is that inspires this level of devotion. Weren't they just three misfit priests on a godforsaken island dealing with an implausibly contrived problem each week?
Father Ted has always had a special place in my heart. Growing up in an Irish family, surrounded by Irish priests and nuns at school, it always struck me that Ted was a remarkably accurate portrayal of the insanity of Catholicism. I hear people talk about Father Ted as inspired surrealism but to me it's a documentary - every one of those "out there" characters exists in real life at a church near you.
Graham Norton's singing priest Noel Furlong is chillingly familiar to anyone who's been near the fringes of a church youth group, and Mrs. Doyle's sublimated sexual obsession is a pitch-perfect recreation of a particular type of Irish woman at a certain age.
Creators Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews' ear for the banality of rural Irish dialogue is exceptional - easily as acute as Roddy Doyle's ear for the crackle of urban Irish. The pair happily admit that they were aided by some extraordinary central performances from the leads: can you imagine anyone other than Frank Kelly, Dermot Morgan, Ardal O'Hanlon and Pauline McLynn in the main roles? It just doesn't work.
Maybe the reason Ted stays in the memory is because it provided a consistent and believable universe - a strange island with a thriving Chinatown whose western side drifted off one day, where army ants roam uninhibited. You don't need plausible characters or situations to speak deep truths about the Irish, Catholicism and middle-aged desperation.
So what were the moments you remember from Father Ted? Maybe The Passion of St Tibulus did it for you, or perhaps the drum'n'bass priest Fintan Stack rocked your world? The way the tickets have sold, this may be the closest you get to Ted Fest, and honouring a much-missed friend.
