Even now I cannot believe Dermot Morgan is dead.

He was a dear and close friend for many years, since the days we worked together on radio in Dublin.

Dermot was an infectious character. His enthusiasm and his love of everything that he did and other people did never failed to make you feel good when you met him. A couple of years ago he tried to persuade me to no avail to make a guest appearance in Father Ted.

Nobody was more determined in their pursuit of me for a job! He even went so far as to book into a neighbouring room in a hotel in Dublin to try to persuade me to take a very minor role in an episode.

My part was to play a TV quiz programme host with a drink problem. Every time he heard the word “drink” he tried to jump out of a window. In the end we mutually agreed that he was a star and I was only a performer.

Nevertheless, that memory of his enthusiasm will be with me for ever.

Before landing the Father Ted role he had spent years treading the boards as a stand-up comedian.

I recall his satirical radio show in Ireland when he found it harder and harder to outstrip reality.

He went on to star in the RTE radio comedy show called Scrap Saturday. And his portrayal of the former Irish prime minister Charles Haughey was unnerving.

The church was always a presence in his life.

Dermot grew up in Dublin and until his twenties he expected to become a priest. His first TV break came playing Father Trendy on a chat show, but in the 1980s he suffered when the Irish media blacklisted his “blasphemous” humour. When Dermot came to try his hand in London I was one of the first people he contacted. To my shame and regret, I was not able to do more to help him than give him a few names and addresses, and yet even for that paltry assistance he was to the day of his death grateful for what he and I used to joke of as “a small mercy” The young Irish writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews created Father Ted out of a feckless priest used in stand-up in Ireland. They banished his character to the desolate Craggy Island where he lived in a big rambling house alongside the offensive old drunk Father Jack Hackett, a stupid younger colleague Father Dougal McGuire and their much put-upon housekeeper Mrs Doyle.

They could not have found a better voice for their creation than Dermot.

The comic chemistry was perfect. “Before Ted, my fame ended at Howth,” he once said, referring to the town just north of Dublin. That certainly changed after the first episode was broadcast in 1995.

Father Ted was best sitcom two years running in the British Comedy Awards and Dermot was named Best Television Comedy Actor in 1996.

The show was even nominated for a Grammy in the U.S. Despite its huge success, Dermot had been planning to quit the show, explaining: “Your sanity starts to go after you have spent three months looking at Father Dougal.”

Dermot Morgan was a fabulous actor, a hilarious companion and a very, very good man.

I was desperately sorry to hear of his death. As he himself would say: “Never mind what the world thinks, I will miss him terribly”.