Father Ted

Father Ted Crilly (Dermot Morgan) is the most normal of the priests on the island. He is a bon vivant, exiled to Craggy Island for something referred to only as "that Lourdes thing." This apparently involved his misappropriating church funds intended to be used to send a poor child to Lourdes in order to go on a gambling spree to Las Vegas. Ted has frequently claimed that the money was "just resting in my account." Ted was previously in Wexford, which happens to be the home town of the series producer, Declan Lowney. His greatest desire is to escape Craggy Island and to find a wealthy parish in Las Vegas and a life free of embarrassment although he is also shown to be as easily seduced by fame as by money. Ted is the devious schemer of the piece and most of the plots are driven by some plan or other that Ted, a fantastic liar, has hatched to either extricate himself from a bad situation or escape Craggy Island for fame and fortune. Often the pursuit of these schemes will necessitate Ted hiding from or separating himself from the company of Mrs Doyle, Father Dougal or some other character on a flimsy pretext along the lines of: "I think actually I'll just stay here and have a quiet pray". Indeed the more devious Ted is being, the more likely he is to say something about prayer or wanting to pray. He frequently justifies his intended sins and schemes to Father Dougal. For example saying that by committing a small sin they are preventing a big sin. Ted is probably the most complex of all the characters and despite his cynicism he often seems to be genuinely disturbed when Father Dougal makes innocent, frequent and sometimes fairly philosophically damning statements or observations about the faith. Ted also keeps a framed picture of Ireland's 1990 and 1994 World Cup manager, Jack Charlton, on the mantelpiece just beside a picture of The Sacred Heart.

Dougal

Father Dougal McGuire (Ardal O'Hanlon) is a very simple-minded soul, in exile for a mysterious incident in Blackrock involving a group of nuns and a Sealink Ferry, presumably caused by his stupidity. His inability to grasp the simplest of everyday concepts provides much of the humour in the show. Dougal also regularly expresses doubts about the validity of Catholic Orthodoxy (indeed, he appears to have no religious belief whatsoever, even questioning the existence of God in front of a visiting Bishop, who eventually gives up the faith and becomes a hippy) and has trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. He also has an addiction to rollerblading, which proves his downfall when he tries to give it up for Lent. ("Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading") The sun is always shining in his world and he often doesn't understand what Ted means. He also called himself "cynical" in the episode "Speed 3". His ideas are always shot down by Ted but in the episode "Are You Right There, Father Ted?", he comes up with a really good idea and Ted asks him to describe it in detail. Dougal then says: "I never knew you had to follow up a good idea with loads of really good small ideas". He then apologises before leaving to sleep in the spare room. Seemingly he can come up with a good idea if he doesn't put much thought into it.

Jack

Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly) is an alcoholic, lecherous, violent and foul-mouthed elderly priest, who is basically incapable of functioning normally as a human being, let alone as a priest.

He is on Craggy Island for all of the above, although one episode mentions the cause of Father Jack's exile as being a wedding he performed in Athlone. No details are given but a shot of his face shows a lecherous expression, suggesting he may have acted in a manner sexually inappropriate for a priest, or perhaps been carried away by his own alcoholism.

Although he can usually be found drinking alcoholic beverages, Father Jack is also known to drink other household liquids including, but not limited to: floor polish (which gave him death-like symptoms such as decomposition), brake fluid, motor oil, castor oil and Toilet Duck (which causes him to embark on a hallucinogenic trip of sorts). In one episode he also drank a whole bottle of sleeping medicine (Dreamy-Sleepy-Nightie-Snoozy-Snooze) and subsequently fell asleep for two weeks. In his younger days he was a fire and brimstone preacher and is said to have been the first priest to denounce The Beatles ("He could see what they were up to"). According to one of Graham Linehan's former peers at Catholic University School (C.U.S.), Fr Hackett was apparently based on one of the priests resident at his former secondary school. During the episode ("Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading") Jack gave up alcohol and Ted remarked that he had been drunk for so long that sobriety must be like a strange, hallucenogenic drug to him. In this rare lucid period Jack cried out in anguish "Oh, my god! Don't tell me I'm still on that fecking island!".

Mrs. Doyle

Mrs. Doyle (Pauline McLynn) is the priests' manic housekeeper. Apart from being "Mrs" rather than "Miss" Doyle, the only reference to her marriage is her remark in the episode "Night of the Nearly Dead": "This reminds me of the time my husband [..pause..] I've said too much."

Hospitality, especially serving tea ("Ahh, go on! - Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on...") is Mrs. Doyle's mission in life; other items served include a mountain of sandwiches which are discarded when she discovers they are not to her own taste, an array of cakes which after much persuading she eventually withdraws from offer in spite of much protest, the lettuce and water she brings for Dougal's pet rabbit Sampras in "The Plague" and the cakejumper she bakes for her idol Eoin McLove in "Night of the Nearly Dead". She spends a significant amount of time trying to clean the large window in the living room, a task which usually sees her plummet to the ground upon trying to get back down from the sill. She also has the occasional tendency to fall from the roof of the parochial house.

Her first name is never mentioned in the series. The third series episode, "The Mainland", maintains the secret in a scene where her name was spoken twice but on both occasions is blocked out by a loud noise, preventing the audience from hearing what was said.

However, Ms. Doyle's first name is given in the script for the episode "Competition Time"; Linehan and Matthews describe it in their footnote as "a very good example of the kind of information one carelessly flings about in the early days of writing a sitcom, without realising that it has the potential to be a lovely dark secret for years and years."