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 pleased when Ted produced a portable confessional and proceeded to talk about it. On one occasion at The Purty Loft in Dún Laoghaire, he sang "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off". Later, Mathews and Woodfull included the character in "The Starship Róisín", a short-lived science fiction comedy radio series they wrote for "The Ian Dempsey Show" on RTÉ Radio. An Irish parody of "Star Trek", it followed the adventures of Captain Bono (played by Woodful, based on the singer Bono), his Vulcan sidekick Stephen "Spock" Roche (played by Mathews, based on cyclist Stephen Roche, with a "cold, cycling