Father Ted Crilly Joshua Trio, a comedic U2 tribute band. The band performed various warm-up sketches written by Mathews, Woodfull, and Linehan, who joined in a non-musical capacity. This led to a side-project, a short-lived sketch troupe called The Fun Bunch. Decided to base a sketch around Mathews's Father Ted character, the group brainstormed for a surname in Linehan's Castleknock kitchen; Linehan suggested Crilly, which stuck immediately. Mathews debuted his character on-stage at a comedy night in the Project Arts Centre. The character was received better than Woodfull's own working-class Dublin priest, and Mathews later appeared as Father Ted in warm-up sketches for
Father Ted Crilly Craven), the novelist he becomes infatuated with in "And God Created Woman", and consider the impossibility of their relationship "terribly sad". Ted is a middle-aged man with a distinctive head of silver-grey hair (often imitated through wigs by cosplaying fans). He wears two badges: one is a pin signifying membership of the Pioneers, an Irish Catholic teetotalers organisation, and the other is a Fáinne, which indicates the wearer's fluency in the Irish language. In 1996, Morgan was named the Best TV Comedy Actor at the British Comedy Awards for his performance in the second series. He died in February 1998,