Dermot Morgan. Comic impersonations.
Dermot Morgan was born in Dublin on March 3, 1952, and educated at St. Benildus College, Stillorgan, and UCD. He came to prominence as part of the team of the highly successful RTÉ television show The Live Mike, compered by Mike Murphy.
After leaving college he worked as an English teacher. He started writing scripts for radio and TV before becoming a stand-up comic. Between 1979 and 1984 he played a range of comic characters, including the cool, with-it Father Trendy. His success enabled him to quit teaching and become a full-time comedian. He also topped the Irish record charts with a 1985 single entitled Thank You Very Much, Mr Eastwood, a comic song about boxing champion Barry McGuigan and his manager, the Belfast businessman Barney Eastwood.
He became well known for his impersonations of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey in the satirical RTE radio show Scrap Saturday, but the programme was axed. The Irish President, Mary Robinson, Eamon Dunphy and PJ Mara, Haughey’s press secretary, were also targets for his satire. When RTÉ axed the popular Scrap Saturday in the early 1990s, Morgan lashed the decision, calling it “a shameless act of broadcasting cowardice and political subservience”. An RTÉ spokesman famously said “The show is not being axed, it’s just not being continued!”
Dermot Morgan was considered ideal for the role of Father Ted when writers Arthur Matthews and Graham Linehan created the new Channel 4 TV comedy.
On its first screening in 1994, Father Ted proved an instant hit and attracted a loyal following. Despite, or because of, criticism from outraged Catholics and others who claimed it was anti-Irish, the series was critically acclaimed, winning a Bafta Best New Comedy Award in 1995 and Best Situation Comedy for two years running. Dermot Morgan won the 1996 Best Comedy Actor award following the screening of a second series.
Dismissing criticisms of the programme as being anti-Irish, Morgan said: “The show’s patently too smart for that. It’s not about `Paddywackery’ cliches. It’s essentially a cartoon. It’s demented. It has its own world and as much integrity as The Simpsons.”
Shortly before his death, less than two days after finishing work on the third series, Dermot Morgan announced his intention to hang up his dog collar for fear of becoming typecast. He hoped to star in a film about Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin who in the Fifties tried to stop a football match between Ireland and and the Communist Yugoslavia, and in a situation comedy that he was writing with Nick Revell, as well as returning to the stand-up comedy circuit.
Dermot Morgan died at Isleworth, Middlesex on March 1, 1998. He was separated from his wife Susanne Garmatz and living with his partner Fiona Clarke. He was also survived by his three sons.