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28th February 2018
10:00am GMT

And I feel that way because I don’t see any edge to it, I don’t see any darkness to it. It’s just this ‘Music Hall,’ ‘willy jokes,’ complete lack of depth. It’s lower than the lowest common denominator. So for that reason I hate comedy like that.
I love Ted. I maybe didn’t get Ted initially, right off the bat, but I’ve grown to love it because it has that darkness and that edge. Just like in Black Books, Blackadder, in The IT Crowd as well. There’s always that bit of an edge there that without it they would not be anywhere near as successful as they are.
It’s like John and Mary – possibly the darkest couple in Irish comedy history…
This is it. I was watching a couple of episodes last night, some of the early ones that I hadn’t seen for a couple of years. I was watching the one where Father Stone comes to visit and in the background of one of the hospital scenes, you see a shot through the door – even after they’ve finished the scene, she’s battering him with the crutch.
It’s like, ok, this is domestic abuse. This is way out there. It’s completely wrong. But the delivery of it is so blasé and so out there that you can’t help but think it’s so surreal that it’s unbelievably funny.
Even the chemistry between the two actors who play John and Mary works very, very well. They’ve a great understanding and that helps the characters along.
At home, was there a big difference between the pre-Ted years and when the show was going on?
Dermot was a different type of person when he was acting; say, a Ted role, and when he was writing or performing his own material. There was a different switch, I guess, and you could see there was a passion for writing and performing his own material that was different to the passion he felt performing others’ material.
That’s not to say he was more passionate about one than the other, but it was different. You could see that one was a gig, a job, for however long and the other was him striving to find a sustainable vehicle for himself.
Rob as an adult with his dad, Dermot Morgan
We were always aware of that, growing up. There was no bitterness that the big break came from something that wasn’t his own, but you were always aware that Dermot’s motivation was to do Ted but to go back and write his own material and to develop his own things so that he would be remembered as the writer and performer, and not just the comic actor. Was there a sense of getting back at RTÉ with the success of Father Ted? With Ted, I don’t think so. I don’t think Dermot was that petty. He wasn’t thinking, “OK, this is the first gig I have and I’m going to give two fingers to RTÉ.” I think, over time, if it had been his own material there would have been a bit of gloating involved, but I think with Ted he was aware that RTÉ had let him go as far as they were willing to let him go and this was a chance to go and do something else.
Dermot with Frank Kelly during the recording of the first episode
Surprisingly, not an outtake from Flight Into Terror
Do you think, had he lived, they would have brought Ted back? I hope not. Dermot was very clear he wasn’t going to do a fourth series and I don’t imagine that a fourth series would have been in the best interests of the show at that stage. And it might have been that they’d have looked to bring it back a year or two later, but I certainly wouldn’t be in favour of that. I always think going back never works. It’s like football managers who leave clubs and go back for a second spell, or couples who break and then go back, it never works. You left for a reason. Follow your mind, follow your heart, there was a reason Ted stopped when it did and maybe that was the right point to call it a day. Better that than to go back and flog yourself to death trying to reproduce what you had the first time around. I think of another example in The Royle Family. Gold for three years and then churning out one terrible Christmas special after another… Yeah, exactly. And even, I hate to say it, I loved Monty Python growing up – Dermot got us into that – but I looked at some of the footage from the reunion last year and I just thought, “lads, this is as blatantly milking it as you can possibly get.”
Rob with Dermot and Don, Rob's older brother
You’re a little bit wary and a little bit apprehensive. As the episodes started everyone began to ease into it, to find their feet. Dermot on set was a ball of energy. It wasn’t unusual for him between takes to bounce around in front of the audience and to almost take the microphone from the warm-up act. He’d be putting on his own little private show, nearly, which meant that instead of having awkward lulls between takes you would have an audience that was constantly laughing, constantly having fun. As the shooting went on I could see the audience lighten up, I could feel myself lighten up, we knew, “there’s something here and it seems to be working.” Whether that was because of how it was set up, or because Dermot and Ardal and Pauline and Frank were having the LOLs between takes, as it were, I couldn’t quantify.
Rob visits Craggy Island Parochial House
But it was really interesting to see how an audience could go from being really unsure and nervous to being very happy, very amused, having a lot of fun in the course of what was maybe two hours’ worth of shooting. During season two, when The Plague was being filmed, everyone was a bit more relaxed. Everyone knew it worked. You could see the crew backstage were that bit more chilled out, and they realised that “this is as good as we think it is, and it’s going to last a bit longer.” Any nerves on stage were really well harnassed, really well channelled, and it worked really well. Was there anything about the show that you wished could have been different? One of the things I find marginally disappointing about Ted, looking back on it, is that when you hear the audience laughing it comes across as canned laughter. It starts high and it ends high and it never has a chance to build or fade out. https://youtu.be/uKe027_sAGY It’s real laughter. Those are real people, I was there, and it doesn’t do the audience as much of a service having it there as it should do, if that makes sense? Yes, maybe nowadays they’d make better use of the audience… Well that’s technology for you, and if that’s the only complaint you have then you’re doing well. I’ve only noticed in the last couple of years that it’s like that, but it’s not a big deal. It doesn’t harm the show at all.
Dermot puts in some practice for My Lovely Horse
Dermot with the late Ray Treacy (left)
You can follow Rob on Twitter @RobMorganDublin and Tedfest @TedfestHQ. Ah go on. *A version of this interview first appeared on JOE in 2015*Explore more on these topics: