Father Ted Mathews first met while working at "Hot Press". In the late 1980s, Mathews, Paul Woodfull and Kieran Woodfull formed The Joshua Trio, a U2 tribute band. The trio began writing comedy sketches to accompany their act. Mathews created the Father Ted character for his short-lived stand-up routine. Before The Joshua Trio played at gigs, Mathews would occasionally come on-stage as Father Ted and tell jokes involving his great friend, Father Dougal McGuire. In 1991, Mathews left his job at "Hot Press" and moved into Linehan's London home. Over the next three to four years, they worked on rough ideas for
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