Why Gerry Ryan was behind much of Tedfest's 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 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.
“It was the middle of a Sri Lankan civil war. I was involved in a Welsh charity that was funding an arts-based project there. It was a gorgeous area but not a very nice place to be in the middle of a civil war as you can imagine.” Through mutual friends, Phillips was introduced to a man named Fergal McCarthy, who was filming some of the charity work taking place in the area.
The two men got down to business, the best way they knew how. “For three days, Fergal and I got through the fact that there was no electricity and therefore no cold beer, by talking about the idea of running a festival for Father Ted.”
Quite excited but not really thinking anything of it, the pair agreed to meet for a pint in Neachtains pub in Galway the following year to discuss the prospect of taking people to their version of Craggy Island. “We never expected it to be more than a self-indulgence,” laughs Phillips.
With a venue on Inis Mór secured thanks to a friend who owned a pub, a date was set for the first festival, to take place in 2007.
“We decided to do it at the end of February, being honest, because it fitted our diaries. The other reason was that we would be assured of shite weather and that will give us what we are looking for. Plus, it gives the island a busy weekend when they would normally be closed.”
February was even more appropriate, given that the anniversaries of both Dermot Morgan and Frank Kelly's deaths fall on February 28. “We got the news about Frank while we were at Tedfest in 2016.”
The duo were adamant about one thing. Tedfest would not be your average television show convention.
“The premise that we had very early on was that we didn't want some sort of cheesy TV convention where we were all sitting in a room watching reruns of the show. We wanted it to be about Craggy Island and giving people to live the Craggy Island dream for a weekend.”
Accommodating between 250 and 300 people on the island for the weekend, there is a major sense of high jinx. So much so, that Phillips says that most people attend every five years because “they get absolutely wrecked.”
Attendees mean business. They come armed with outfits to dress up in – think Mrs Doyle, or a holy statue – and plays on repeat throughout the weekend.
“It’s just a bit of craic,” says Phillips. “You’d be surprised to find that most of the people who make the pilgrimage to Craggy Island are actually Irish.” He puts this down to the Gerry Ryan Effect. “For some reason – and I don’t know why – Gerry decided Tedfest was a great idea. And once he said it, everyone else began to think it.”
The support of the RyanLine led to madcap events, like a forty-day journey pushing a milk float around Ireland. The idea came from a throwaway comment that Phillips made on the Gerry Ryan Show.
“This is what I mean when I say don’t go on the radio under the influence” he laughs. In January 2008, Phillips was joined by 1000 volunteers as he pushed a 70-year-old milk float on a journey of 798 miles – the charity ‘push’ raised money for Down Syndrome Ireland.
Tedfest is not without scandal. Phillips roars laughing when telling me to Google Tedfest Oz. “We took Tedfest to Australia and it was carnage! I think there is still news footage on the internet.”
Indeed there is. Tedfest Oz was shut down by police after several community complaints about the noise. Irish ex-pats tried to make the case for Tedfest to Prime News Australia “We got up to a few things last night but the police came in then and they wrecked it, so they did,” a young man in an O’Neill’s jersey and an illuminous yellow sun hat laments.
When Tedfest returns to the island in October, it will be like “Lord of the Flies on crack,” says Peter Phillips. But he’s only messing. He can't wait to welcome the TedHeads back to Craggy Island. Especially the widow and widower who found true love at Tedfest and return every year.
“Stories like this are why I keep doing it,” Phillips tells me. “When you think of how many people know about Tedfest, it's an event that is only as big as a wedding - and it's known all over the world.”
- Find out more about Tedfest at tedfest.org
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