Frank Kelly's six best moments as Father Jack
Six highlights from Frank Kelly's career-defining role as alcoholic misanthrope Father Jack
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Your support makes all the difference.Frank Kelly, the actor who played Father Jack in Father Ted, has died aged 77.
Kelly had a 60-year career in comedy and soap acting, but it was his role as the curmudgeonly alcoholic Father Jack Hackett that made him a household name.
He played opposite the eponymous Ted (Dermot Morgan), who filled a relatively straight role as the put-upon parish priest banished to Craggy Island for an unspecified financial misdemeanour.
There, Ted was forced to share a house with the hapless Father Dougal, the tea-obsessed Mrs Doyle and Kelly's misanthropic tour de force Father Jack, who was almost always incomprehensibly drunk.
The show's writers put it best: "Father Jack has not been sober since 1936. His vocabulary consists of three words, only two of them printable."
Here are five of Kelly's best moments on the show:
1) Father Jack struggles to expand his somewhat limited vocabulary, prior to the arrival of senior clergy on Craggy Island:
2) Father Jack seldom ventured out of his armchair in the front of room of the parochial house. But when he did, he normally had one thing in mind:
3) He only sobered up once in the show's three-series run, achieving remarkable heights of perception:
4) But he soon found that sober life was not at all to his liking:
5) Father Jack did have a more sensitive side. Here, he develops an attachment to a new pet:
6) Father Jack's full gamut of wit, charm and loquacity:
Kelly was described
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