A Song for Europe (Father Ted) ultimately cut down to just long enough for people familiar with the out-take to get the reference. Ted mentions "Icy-Tea" and "Scoopy Scoopy Dog Dog" meaning Ice-T and Snoop Doggy Dogg. The tragic story of Nin Huguen and the Huguenotes' deaths in a plane crash could be a reference to similar events with past musician artists such as the "Day the Music Died" (deaths of The Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens) and the loss of multiple members of Lynyrd Skynyrd in the 1977 Convair CV-240 crash. Ted mentions that there was a priest named Father Benny Cake who
Ritchie Valens hospitalized with severely frostbitten feet, and several others, including Valens and the Big Bopper, caught the flu. The show was split into two acts, with Valens closing the first act. After Bunch was hospitalized, Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts took over the drumming duties. When Dion and the Belmonts were performing, the drum seat was taken by either Valens or Buddy Holly. A surviving color photograph shows Valens at the drum kit. Black and white photos found in 2014 taken by Mary Gerber on February 2, 1959, which are on display at the Surf Ballroom show Buddy Holly playing drums