Fr Stone speaks

Michael Redmond became famous as Fr Stone in 'Father Ted', and the dog collar has been a recurring motif throughout his career so far, writes JAY RICHARDSON

‘I ONLY HAD it once where a woman came up to me after a show, disappointed, and said ‘I thought you were going to be like Fr Stone’. She thought I was going to stand there, unmoving for 20 minutes, just saying ‘I’m fine’.”

Michael Redmond smiles a broad, toothy grin at the memory. Such a challenging, minimalist display wouldn't seem out of place amid the more pretentious shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. Back at the world's largest arts festival for the first time in more than a decade, and championed by the likes of Stewart Lee and Ed Byrne, the hangdog, droopy-moustached comedian forever associated with his Father Tedappearance as the most boring priest on the planet, is, nevertheless, a familiar sight to Scottish audiences. He comperes monthly Best of Irish showcases and hosts his Sunday Service every week at the Stand in Glasgow, where he lives.

The 59-year-old from Blackrock has long sported a shock of Einsteinian grey hair atop Stone's distinctive deadpan, and people insist on reminding Redmond of that single Father Tedepisode, 15 years after it was first broadcast. "It's great – it heightens the profile," he enthuses. "It's not like it was for Ardal [O'Hanlon] initially, when everyone was always expecting him to be Dougal."

Invited to perform at the inaugural Tedfest on Inishmore in 2007, he recalls “hundreds and hundreds of priests, but significantly more Mrs Doyles – of both sexes, bizarrely”.

When his former girlfriend opened an upmarket delicatessen in Glasgow’s West End, in which he occasionally worked, a local newspaper ran with the headline: “Father Ted Star Opens Fruit And Veg Shop.”

"I think a lot of people assumed Dermot [Morgan] was down on his luck," chuckles Redmond of his late friend, who died 12 years ago, a day after filming the final Father Tedepisode.

It had been a last-minute cancellation of a never-broadcast Morgan series for RTÉ, in which he featured, that prompted Redmond to quit Dublin in 1987. He left to try London’s burgeoning alternative comedy scene, joining Kevin McAleer, Ian Macpherson and Owen O’Neill as the first wave of Irish stand-ups since Dave Allen to make an impact on UK comedy.

After that first, bitter taste of censorship, he experienced it once more when his one-man Edinburgh show, Eamon, Older Brother of Jesuswas developed for BBC Radio 4, then pulled four days before broadcast when the station's new controller, a Scottish Catholic, heard the tape. "I never set out to be offensive. It wasn't about lampooning religion, particularly. I was more interested in this character that didn't get a look-in because his brother was the Messiah. I might have realised Jesus having an older brother inferred Mary wasn't a virgin though!"

Eamonwas subsequently snuck out on Alan Davies's mid-1990s Radio 1 show in brief instalments. Still, for a lapsed Catholic, Redmond can't seem to shake the priesthood habit. Twice since Fr Stone he's been cast in a dog collar, once on Chris Morris's controversial Channel 4 satire Brass Eyeand more recently in the low-budget film Voodoophone.

Now he’s penned his first novel, a darkly comic tale about an Irish paedophile priest, “who begins blackmailing kids because he’s heard their confessions. So they decide to kidnap him. But he dies. Several publishers have told me they really like it but they’ll never be able to sell it, even though most Irish writing is pretty dark in my experience.”

It's Not Father Stone – It's . . . Michael Redmond!is at the Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh. until August 30