Father Ted Crilly Hackett; and their neurotic housekeeper, Mrs Doyle (whom Linehan states Ted first met when she won the local Lovely Girls competition). He has a bitter rivalry with Father Dick Byrne, a priest living on the nearby Rugged Island. Ted's experiences throughout the show range from the mundane (having to protest against a blasphemous film in "The Passion of Saint Tibulus", rigging a raffle to repair the roof in "Think Fast, Father Ted") to the surreal (becoming Ireland's entry for Eurosong 1996 in "A Song for Europe", climbing out of a flying plane to fix the fuel line in "Flight Into
And God Created Woman (Father Ted) such as Dostoevsky and Wilde; Ted is out of his depth but bumbles through without Polly noticing this, and she invites him to come to her house that night for "some more book talk"; he accepts, although, realising what this implies, says "it's only a drink" to the picture of Jesus on the back of the settee, after Polly has left. Ted then meets the group of nuns visiting Craggy Island, who are led by Sister Assumpta and seem starstruck, treating Ted more like a pop star. They have loved Ted's masses in the past, but Ted suddenly realises that