Why Gerry Ryan was behind much of Tedfest's success

Peter Phillips, co-founder of the unique festival devoted to ‘Father Ted’, talks to Ciara McDonnell about this year’s festival and reveals how Gerry Ryan played a big part in its success

Joe Rooney who played Father Damo in the hit TV SHow Father Ted pictured with Peter Philips, Founder of Tedfest. Picture courtesy of TedFest

“The moral of the story there was don't go on the Gerry Ryan Show when you're drunk.” Peter Phillips, founder of Tedfest is regaling me with stories from the festival’s fifteen years. Last weekend instead of heading to Inis Mór at the end of a blustery February, Phillips underwent a partial knee replacement. In line with Covid-19 guidelines, the organisers have moved the annual celebration of Father Ted to October, when they are hoping to welcome 250 Tedheads to the Aran island.

“It is really weird,” he booms over the phone from his base in Wales. “I can't say I'm looking forward to the operation, but there has not been a more convenient time for me in forty years to have a knackered knee.” Phillips is giddy, just as you would expect someone who dreamed up a festival devoted to Father Ted would be. An event organiser of note, prior to dreaming up Tedfest, Phillips was running Europe’s largest Elvis festival. The idea for the festival on Inis Mór came to him in Sri Lanka, he explains.