MN: You could almost be Welsh with a name like Morgan.

DM: I’ve not been able to fathom where the Welsh came from. St Patrick was a Welshman, wasn’t he? I may be descended from St Patrick!

So do you really fancy yourself as descended straight from a saint?

I’m very, very unclerical, I must say. I’ve described myself before as a severely lapsed Catholic and I always find it strange that I was cast as a priest.

GK Chesterton once wrote of angels: ‘They can fly because they can take themselves lightly.’ Is that a reason for the stupendous rise of Father Ted?

The church has more confidence now to be self-deprecating, but I’m not in the business of spin-doctoring for the clergy – how they handle it is entirely their own business. I’m looking after the comedy side of things.

Mind you, they have looked after the comedy side fairly well, too, albeit unintentionally, over the years.

You were brought up a Catholic?

Yes. So I suppose it gives me a chance – maybe this is cathartic for me – to send up those who were the establishment when I was growing up.

At what stage did you dare make the break from your religion? It’s a big hold that Catholicism can have on a young child’s mind.

Absolutely true. The Jews think they have guilt sewn up, but believe me, we Catholics have the market. I suppose there’s guilt and guilt: guilt in the city, and guilt in the theological sense. To be serious for a moment, which I suppose I have to be, the dogmatic style of being raised is not good for your health. Once I found it to be non-viable, emotionally and morally, I broke away. The break was a healthy and necessary thing – and inevitable, I’m surprised to say.

You must have been in fear of God and full of guilt and confession before you packed in religion?

I was full of fear and confession. At four years of age, you go to school. Up to this time, Mummy has always told you: ‘I love you son, you’re a good boy.’ You’re fed an unmediated diet of love and affection. Then you go in and some battle-axe leans over and says: ‘Jesus Christ died because of you!’ So you’re a murderer, and it’s a bit of a contrast to come to terms with that. So, yes, the guilt thing was huge and it was also vastly manipulative. But now, for me, lest anybody imagines I go round seriously worrying about it, it’s almost irrelevant to go back.

So leaving Ireland was healthy for you?

Honestly, yes. Both in religious and professional terms. I know it’s a bit of a cliche, however – the Irish guy who leaves Ireland and then kicks sand back at them.

Are you nevertheless proud to be Irish?

I’m very proud of modern lreland, but there were very negative things there.

As recently as 1995, when divorce was voted in by a very slight margin, the bishops got out from behind the ramparts one more time to see if they could frighten people into supporting their agenda on a secular issue. Now what they should have been doing instead was getting up to apologise for the child abuse, the way women were treated, and the horrors and the evils they had inflicted because of their own power. And that was entirely hierarchical and had very little to do with Jesus Christ or anything like that.

Are you saying that it was a power struggle?

Yes, between one corporation and another: the elected government versus the Roman government. Now that’s the kind of line Ian Paisley would be proud of!

All your upbringing was in Ireland?

Yes, but British television was a huge influence on me. I’m going back to Marty Feldman and those people that were happening then. They were an influence on my parents, too. My father had serious time for the cleverer side of British television and radio comedy. When Dave Allen started appearing at the London Palladium, it was like Ireland advancing in the World Cup. It was great to see one of our own doing so well in a truly competitive society and on a bigger stage.

I wonder if the Irish are a bit nicer about their countrymen’s success – I always feel the Welsh are rather grudging when it’s happening to one of their own.

The Irish are capable of that kind of begrudgery, too. But once you get beyond the reaches of begrudgery, you are away. I’ve had this experience since Father Ted. When I go back I’m congratulated by taxi drivers. It’s the strangest thing: ‘Fair play to you, Dermo, you show them.’ They’re delighted. It’s as if you’re a League of Ireland footballer and you’ve got to play in the Premiership.

A prophet out of his own land, perhaps. It’s meritocratic, I suppose, and that’s fair.

I was talking to Eddie Izzard and he was saying that when he was home in Hampshire doing his thing, it was ‘so what?’

But once he started to establish himself and to do well in London, he became a god in Hampshire. I think the phenomenon is worldwide.

You’ve convinced me.

I do think the Irish are also more fair-minded than has been imagined. And broader-minded, too. It’s a healthier place to live in now. Ireland at a distance – it’s worth being proud of.

You have been courageous in speaking out. You say what you believe. Were you taking risks in terms of your career?

Ireland is a small country – there’s only one television channel. Obviously if you say the wrong thing, there’s nowhere else that you can go.

Who or what gave you your bold voice and your opinions?

Ireland. The irony is that if you are raised in a particular type of scenario, it can be very bad for you personally, but it can be very good for your creative thing, because you react. And my mother was a scarily good mimic. When I’m doing Father Ted, and I’m doing the strict person in it, I often say that this is my mother’s scene coming up now.

An ability to mimic must have been essential for getting under the skin of politicians when you were working as a stand-up comedian in Ireland?

Somebody said I was doing in lreland what Rory Bremner was doing in England. But, oddly, it had more impact in Ireland. Politics in Britain is of interest, but it’s not as obsessive an interest as it is in Ireland. Also there are wings and wings within the Tory Party. There are wings and wings within the Labour Party, though Tony and Mandy are slowly but surely crushing that. They run a tight ship, or, if you’re John Prescott, they run a very, very tight 4.2 Jaguar, while the rest of us cycle along behind it.