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
Father Ted Crilly leader, albeit within the context of the priesthood. In a 1997 interview, Morgan attributed the show's success to the appealing double-act formed by Dougal, "an idiot who knows nothing", and Ted, "an idiot who thinks he knows something but actually knows nothing." The actor identified Ted as "an Everyman guy, bumbling through life with a half-wit." Linehan and Mathews have described Ted as a decent man, albeit one with "cheap" and "earthly" ambitions; they note that he would hate to become a bishop or cardinal. Ted does not want to be seen as a priest, but is still willing to