On the 20th anniversary of his father’s death, Rob Morgan writes of his struggle to come to terms with the private loss of a very public figure.

Ask anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one and I guarantee you that at least 95 per cent of them will have been offered the well-meant words “time is a great healer”. I’m happy to tell you, that’s bollox.

It’s 20 years since my father, Dermot Morgan, left us with uncharacteristically poor timing. I will never forget the voicemail from my aunt that first alerted us to the fact that something was wrong.

At the same time as my mother, Susanne, was returning the call; my uncle rang our doorbell. I immediately knew Dermot was gone.

I don’t remember if anyone ever said the words “Dermot’s dead” to me, but it didn’t matter, I knew. That was the last time that I was able to separate my father, from the man the public knew and loved.

A generation of people has grown up since Dermot passed away and it’s easy to forget how different it was back then. We lived in a country that still only had RTE 1 and 2 as English language television outlets.

We’d passed the divorce referendum less than three years earlier and by a very small majority. The Church still held huge influence over the country. It was against that backdrop that Dermot performed.

His chosen targets were those who (mis)lead our nation, people he felt needed to be held to account. I’m not sure I ever truly knew just how important his work had become to the majority of the country. These days, I simply wonder if I’d prefer that it hadn’t.

Because of who Dermot was, everyone felt they knew him and when he died his face was on the telly and in the papers. His name was on the radio and on people’s lips.

With the end of his mortal life, his persona was taking on a life of its own. His co-workers, his targets and even those who had tried their hardest to keep him down; lined up to give their two cents about the man they knew.

Amongst it all, a 17-year-old kid, who didn’t know any better, was trying to talk about his dad. The man who died, the man they didn’t know.

The late Gerry Ryan kindly allowed me to come on his show on the day after Dermot died to do just that. I don’t know if it did any good, but it made ME feel better. I’d taken a bit of him back. Something I think I’ve wanted to do ever since.

I’m fiercely proud of who Dermot was and what he did. I’m also eternally grateful that he got to see some of his success before he died and I’m eternally grateful to the people who loved him and his work.

I love hearing stories from people who met Dermot; few people get to share stories about a parent with a stranger in a bar, so I know how fortunate I am.

All that being said, there is a part of me – one that will always be 17 years, 275 days old – that for about a month every year, between his anniversary and what would have been his birthday, wants all that to go away. This year, that feeling is even stronger.

I am delighted that he’s still so important to people, even 20 years after his death and in the last week, I’ve read a number of lovely tributes to the “man who brought Ted to life”, to “the comedian and satirist” and even just “Father Ted”. I wish that they could just have been to “Dermot” though, not Ted.

I started writing this in the hope that I could tell you what it was like to be loved and raised by Dermot, turns out I was an idiot for thinking that I could actually accomplish that, probably not if you gave me the next 20 years and certainly not in the 700 or so words that I have here – but I wish I could.

Instead, I’ll settle for reminding me and you that he was far more than the sum of his public parts. He was also a friend, a partner and a father – my father.