No Jack City
They say bad news waits until you're home and today was no exception. After a weekend at my brothers playing Empyrion (when he wouldn't stop renaming my bloody warpship...) I came home to find one of my favourite actors had passed away. The name Frank Kelly might not be too well known outside of his native Ireland and the UK but he was an immensely talented actor and, according ato a close friend, a very kind and polite gentleman of the theatre.
Now Frank has an extensive career on Irish television and even achieved a Christmas hit single (found here) which I listen to at least once during the festive period but I discovered his work trough his most famous role as the hard-drinking, hard-living foul-mouthed geriatric priest Father Jack Hackett in the sitcom Father Ted. Father Ted has been one of my favourite all-time sitcoms and deservedly is celebrated 20 years after it's debut in 1996, the adventures of Ted, Jack and Dougal, three catholic priests in an almost twilight zone-esque parish in the middle of nowhere on a tiny island off the coast, banished for being an embezzler, a drunken lech and an idiot respectively, and their borderline-insane tea-obsessed housekeeper Mrs Doyle, from having to endure the world's crappiest funfair, having to deal with the plane they're travelling on running out of fuel in mid-air, dealing with an explosive milkfloat and their constant battle to save themselves from being sent to an even worse parish by the tyrannical bishop Len Brennan, the priests and community of Craggy Island earned a place in the hearts of UK comedy fans (with the two islands of Inis Oirr and Inis Mor once at loggerheads due to their respective claims to be the real Craggy Island) and the sad timing of Frank Kelly's passing exactly 18 years after Dermot Morgan (who played the eponymous Father Ted) the night they finished filming the third series, has been felt by many fans.
Fathers Dougal Maguire (Ardal O'Hanlon), Ted Crilly (Dermot Morgan), Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly) and Mrs Doyle (Pauline Mclynn), the finest example of Religious Programming on television
If you are unfamiliar with this fantastic sitcom I advise finding a few episodes and taking a little trip to Craggy Island, where the locals are reasonably friendly, the roads will finally be being brought out after being put in storage for winter and the coastline lit up by the gentle glow of the nuclear waste dumped by the BNFL, I know for a fact i'm going to be paying a visit to old friends so join me in raising a glass of Guinness, Jacobs creek Chardonnay 1991 and Floor Polish in salute to Frank Kelly.
I leave you now with the tender words of Father Ted as he stood vigil over Father Jack's body.
"It's beginning to snow again. The flakes, silver and dark, are falling obliquely against the lamplight. It's probably falling all over the island; on the central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the graveyards, upon the crosses and headstones, upon all the living and the dead..."
"SHUT THE FECK UP!"
[flash=250,210]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdkN57xvekI[/flash]
Godspeed Frank Kelly...
They say bad news waits until you're home and today was no exception. After a weekend at my brothers playing Empyrion (when he wouldn't stop renaming my bloody warpship...) I came home to find one of my favourite actors had passed away. The name Frank Kelly might not be too well known outside of his native Ireland and the UK but he was an immensely talented actor and, according ato a close friend, a very kind and polite gentleman of the theatre.
Now Frank has an extensive career on Irish television and even achieved a Christmas hit single (found here) which I listen to at least once during the festive period but I discovered his work trough his most famous role as the hard-drinking, hard-living foul-mouthed geriatric priest Father Jack Hackett in the sitcom Father Ted. Father Ted has been one of my favourite all-time sitcoms and deservedly is celebrated 20 years after it's debut in 1996, the adventures of Ted, Jack and Dougal, three catholic priests in an almost twilight zone-esque parish in the middle of nowhere on a tiny island off the coast, banished for being an embezzler, a drunken lech and an idiot respectively, and their borderline-insane tea-obsessed housekeeper Mrs Doyle, from having to endure the world's crappiest funfair, having to deal with the plane they're travelling on running out of fuel in mid-air, dealing with an explosive milkfloat and their constant battle to save themselves from being sent to an even worse parish by the tyrannical bishop Len Brennan, the priests and community of Craggy Island earned a place in the hearts of UK comedy fans (with the two islands of Inis Oirr and Inis Mor once at loggerheads due to their respective claims to be the real Craggy Island) and the sad timing of Frank Kelly's passing exactly 18 years after Dermot Morgan (who played the eponymous Father Ted) the night they finished filming the third series, has been felt by many fans.
Fathers Dougal Maguire (Ardal O'Hanlon), Ted Crilly (Dermot Morgan), Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly) and Mrs Doyle (Pauline Mclynn), the finest example of Religious Programming on television
If you are unfamiliar with this fantastic sitcom I advise finding a few episodes and taking a little trip to Craggy Island, where the locals are reasonably friendly, the roads will finally be being brought out after being put in storage for winter and the coastline lit up by the gentle glow of the nuclear waste dumped by the BNFL, I know for a fact i'm going to be paying a visit to old friends so join me in raising a glass of Guinness, Jacobs creek Chardonnay 1991 and Floor Polish in salute to Frank Kelly.
I leave you now with the tender words of Father Ted as he stood vigil over Father Jack's body.
"It's beginning to snow again. The flakes, silver and dark, are falling obliquely against the lamplight. It's probably falling all over the island; on the central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the graveyards, upon the crosses and headstones, upon all the living and the dead..."
"SHUT THE FECK UP!"
[flash=250,210]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdkN57xvekI[/flash]
Godspeed Frank Kelly...