Dermot Morgan

In December 2013, a documentary, Dermot Morgan – Fearless Funnyman, aired on RTÉ One.

In 1996, Father Ted won a BAFTA award for Best Comedy. The same year Morgan also won a British Comedy Award for Top TV Comedy Actor, and McLynn was awarded Top TV Comedy Actress. In 1999, Father Ted won a second BAFTA for Best Comedy, with Morgan being awarded Best Comedy Performance posthumously.

Morgan said in an interview with Gay Byrne on The Late Late Show in 1996 that he was writing a screenplay entitled Miracle of the Magyars, based on a real-life incident in the 1950s when the Archbishop of Dublin forbade Catholics from attending a football match between the Republic of Ireland and Yugoslavia on religious and spiritual grounds. Yugoslavia won the match 4–1. Morgan planned to use Hungary as the opposing side to Ireland – hence the title. At the time of his death in 1998, he had completed the screenplay but the film was never made.

Already a celebrity in Ireland, Morgan got his big break in Britain with Channel 4's Irish sitcom Father Ted, which ran for three series from 1995 to 1998. Writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews auditioned many actors for the title role, but Morgan's enthusiasm won him the part. Father Ted focused on the misadventures of three morally dubious Irish Catholic priests, whose transgressions have gotten them exiled to the fictional Craggy Island, off the coast of County Galway.

In 1991, Morgan received a Jacob's Award for his contribution to Scrap Saturday from the Irish national newspaper radio critics.

The Haughey/Mara "double act" became the star turn in a series that mocked both sides of the political divide, from Haughey and his advisors to opposition Fine Gael TD Michael Noonan as Limerick disk jockey "Morning Noon'an Night". When RTÉ axed the show in the early 1990s a national outcry ensued. Morgan lashed the decision, calling it "a shameless act of broadcasting cowardice and political subservience". An RTÉ spokesman said: "The show is not being axed. It's just not being continued!"

Morgan released a comedy single, Thank You Very Very Much, Mr Eastwood, in December 1985. It was a take on the fawning praise that internationally successful Irish boxer Barry McGuigan gave his manager, Barney Eastwood, at the end of successive bouts. The single 'featured' lines by McGuigan, Ronald Reagan, Bob Geldof and Pope John Paul II, and was the Christmas number one in the Irish singles chart in 1985.

Morgan's biggest Irish broadcasting success occurred in the late 1980s on the Saturday morning radio comedy show Scrap Saturday, in which Morgan, co-scriptwriter Gerard Stembridge, Owen Roe and Pauline McLynn mocked Ireland's political, business and media establishment. The show's treatment of the relationship between the ever-controversial Taoiseach Charles Haughey and his press secretary PJ Mara proved particularly popular, with Haughey's dismissive attitude towards Mara and the latter's adoring and grovelling attitude towards his "Boss ... the greatest Leader, Man of Destiny, Statesman, Titan, a Colossus" winning critical praise.

Morgan came to prominence as part of the team behind the highly successful RTÉ television show The Live Mike, presented by Mike Murphy. Between 1979 and 1982 Morgan played a range of comic characters who appeared between segments of the show. Morgan lampooned the rampant Modernism within the Post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church in Ireland by creating Father Trendy, a wishy-washy, trying-to-be-cool hippie-priest (modeled after Father Brian D'Arcy). Father Trendy always wore an Elvis-style haircut and, sometimes, a leather jacket. He was also given to drawing ludicrous parallels between religious life and secular hobbies in two-minute 'sermons' to the camera. Morgan's other characters included a bigotted GAA member who waved his hurley around while verbally attacking his pet hates.

Dermot married Susanne Garmatz, a native of Hamburg, and they had two sons: Don (born 1978) and Rob (born 1980). They separated in 1990. He later began a relationship with Fiona Clarke, with whom he had another son, Ben (born 1993).

Dermot John Morgan (31 March 1952 – 28 February 1998) was an Irish comedian and actor. He was best known for the role of Father Ted Crilly, the title character in the Irish sitcom Father Ted.

Morgan was born on 31 March 1952 in Dublin. His parents were Donnchadh Morgan, an artist and sculptor with a passion for drama, and Hilda "Holly" Stokes, a "celebrated beauty" from Dún Laoghaire. Donnchadh died young of an aneurysm, leaving Hilda with four children: Dermot, Paul, Denise, and Ruth, who died in childhood.