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Life
Author of Well-remembered Days: Memoir of a Twentieth-century Catholic Life (London: Macmillan 2001), 224pp. [satire]; with Graham Linehan, co-authored Father Ted (C4 1996); author of Improbable Frequency (Th. Fest., 2004; Abbey 2005), a musical dealing with Ireland during the Emergency, and featuring Flann O’Brien, John Betjeman and Erwin Schrodinger, the IRA, gaelgoirs, et al., inter al., and dealing with a secret German code which turns out to be ....’
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Commentary
Terry Eagleton, reviewing of Arthur Mathews, Well-Remembered Days (Macmillan), in The Irish Times (3 March 2001), calls it a ‘side-splitting spoof, rich in surreal humour, wickedly inventive, and one of the funniest books to come out of Ireland since Flann O’Brien’s.’ Gives account of plot, in which Eoin O’Ceallaigh, A Dev [de Valera] supporter, fan of Hitler, League of Republican Paedophile Priests activist and League of Mother of God Against Sin editor, remembers: ‘Now a robust 80-year old, his life-long crusade has been against liberalism, the genital organs, the British, plays with titles like Big Jugs, Protestants, men who cook and boot-faced ethnic minorities who can’t take the odd joke at their own [sic] expense’. (See further under Eagleton, infra.)
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Quotations
Full text of Improbable Frequency [excluded pending copyright permission].
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Notes
Father Ted, produced by Hat Trick Productions for Channel 4 and studio-filmed in London. The programme ran for three series (25 episodes) from 21 April 1995 to 1 May 1998; set on Craggy Island; featuring Dermot Morgan as Fr. Ted Crilly. Morgan died of a heart attack at 45 during a post-film celebration on 28 Feb. 1998. The other mainstays of the series were Ardal O’Hanlon (Fr,. Dougal), Frank Kelly (Fr. Jack), and Pauline McLynn (Mrs. Doyle) while occasional parts were played by Graham Norton, Tommy Tiernan, Patrick McDonnell, Don Wycherley, Joe Rooney, Jason Byrne, Pat Shortt, Ed Byrne and Brendan Grace. [Various websites.]
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