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
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