Father Dougal McGuire to television, casting O'Hanlon as the on-screen Dougal. Arthur Mathews created the character of Father Ted while working at "Hot Press" in 1987–89. During production weekends, he and Paul Woodfull had the idea for The Joshua Trio, a comedic U2 tribute band. The band performed various warm-up sketches written by Mathews, Woodfull, and Graham Linehan, who joined in a non-musical capacity. These sketches included stand-up performed by Mathews in-character as Father Ted Crilly. As Ted, Mathews sometimes read from a book, "Notes from Africa", purportedly written by Father Dougal McGuire, a missionary friend who described his experiences of being attacked
Father Ted Crilly Dougal says that they will live together on the island forever, and a montage of clips from all previous episodes is shown before the episode ends. The episode originally ended by flashing forward a year to the next conference. Ted sees Father Kevin standing on the ledge again; instead of helping, he joins him on the ledge, preparing to jump himself. The scene was cut and replaced with the montage following Morgan's death and poor reaction from audiences. Mathews later noted that the original ending still left Ted's fate ambiguous, and would have suggested the possibility of future episodes. Linehan