Father Dougal McGuire Linehan and Mathews to discard the mockumentary format and expand the Father Ted episode to a traditional sitcom, Father Dougal became one of the main characters. When writing Dougal, Linehan and Mathews drew on Stan Laurel, incorporating some of Linehan's own behaviour during moments of confusion. Linehan and Mathews saw O'Hanlon in a modernised Shakespeare play broadcast by RTÉ, and were impressed by the "weird, gormless" face he could pull. Linehan later said, "That was Dougal right there. He was just spot-on and he became our secret weapon. The show took off so quickly because Ardal was so instantly funny."
New Jack City (Father Ted) Park. Jack, upon returning to Craggy Island's parochial house, finds out about Stack giving his booze hoard to Dougal. This angers Jack to do what are presumably terrible things to Stack, however he is stopped from taking his revenge when both Ted and Jack notice that Stack has caught the "Hairy Hands Syndrome" from Jack's ancient, diseased chair. Stack is sent to Jurassic Park (where he still insists on playing jungle music), and everything returns to normal (though Jack is locked in a hermetically sealed chamber to prevent him passing the hairy hands syndrome onto Ted and Dougal, which Ted