Wearing dog collar and purple clerical shirt, TV’s most popular priest sits down, takes a deep breath … and confesses an intimate moment from adolescence.

“Like all teenage boys there was a tingling down below which could not be ignored,” says Dermot Morgan – better known as Channel 4’s anarchic clergyman Father Ted. “You are told not to touch yourself, but my body was saying something else … like, ’Touch me, go on, touch me’.

“I was thinking, ’Oh no, I’ll go to Hell’.”

It was a Friday afternoon, and Dermot was in the bathroom.

“I got a bit enthusiastic and then I realised that I was damned,” he says. “I was terrified, I had just committed the greatest sin on Earth and would be condemned to eternal damnation.

“I thought, ’Now I’ve done it’.

“The next confession was on Saturday between 11am and 1pm. I thought, ’If I get eternal damnation for one interference, what do I get for doing it again – two eternal damnations?’

“So I went for it between then and 1pm to get all the extra bit in before that confession.

“It must have got a world record. It was a bit sad though – the paramedics had to take me to confession. The smile kept me awake for a long time though.”

Dermot – named Top Comedy Actor in last week’s British Comedy Awards – grins broadly at his dig at the Catholic Church.

“It’s all a lot of rubbish,” he says. “I went to a good Christian brothers’ boys’ school – good paramilitary training.

“The things we were told were bullshit. It was impossible to live with. When I was five I had Hell described to me in great detail.

“It was like being trapped in a Jeremy Beadle audience … not a very pretty sight.

“And then you discover that the Bishop of Galway has a love-child and the Bishop of Argyll has been bonking all these women, and you realise the difference between what you are told and what they do.

“You’re told everything is wrong – sex is wrong, masturbation is wrong, drinking too much is wrong.

“It’s not good to have that completely screwed-up attitude to sex.

“You’re on your knees telling God, ’I’m such a jerk, please forgive me, I don’t know why you put me on this Earth because I’m so worthless’.

“All that grovelling. It’s no wonder most people say, ’Sod this for a game of soldiers’. It’s a very odd person who retains practising religion.”

Dermot, 44, has spent most of his life working as a comedian in Ireland. But – funnily enough – it was his sense of humour that nearly caused his downfall.

In 1985 he was axed by Irish TV station RTE because, he says, of “political subservience and self-censorship”.

His career nose-dived. He was reduced to doing voice-overs and pub gigs and ended up staring bankruptcy in the face.

“Then I landed a radio show … and I was saved,” says Dermot.

“I was more determined than ever. I decided they were not going to keep me down.

I realised that you have to get off your arse and fight. That’s why Father Ted’s success is even sweeter.”

In Father Ted, Dermot plays one of three hopeless priests living in the remote Parochial House on Craggy Island, spending their days drinking, swearing and smoking.

The BAFTA award-winning show, condemned by one top Catholic bishop, has shocked the Church, while becoming cult viewing.

But Dermot’s jokes – and cheeky grin – hide a personal anguish. The strict Irish laws have affected his own life deeply, trapping him into a marriage which broke down over ten years ago.

He married his wife, Suzanne, when he was young and trying to make his name on the comedy circuit.

“We were too young when we married, in our twenties,” he says.

“We realised it was not right for us but by then we had two children – Don, now 17, and Bobby, who is 16.

“We hung in there for a long time because of the children, but inevitably that doesn’t work.

“We made sure that both parents gave the same message – that while Mum and Dad would not be together, the children were very much loved.

“It is one of the things I am most proud of … that my ex-wife and I managed to do that without any nastiness.”

Since the break-up, Dermot has been with his long-term partner Fiona for 10 years. They have a three-year-old son, Ben, and live in Richmond, Surrey, but have kept their house in Dublin.

Irish law has stopped Dermot divorcing Suzanne – although this will change in February.

So he has been unable to marry Fiona and is technically seen as committing adultery because he is still married.

“The religious thing has not been a problem,” he says. “We’ve just done what every other person in Ireland does who has a bust up.

“We said to each other, do we want to play silly buggers? The answer was, ’No’.

“Effectively, we are divorced but not in law. We don’t have it in title but we have it in reality.

“Fiona and I live as we see fit – not in a reckless and light-hearted way, but with all the responsibilities of marriage … without the witchdoctors.

“I am now taking advantage of the new divorce laws after all this time.

“I’m not sure if we will marry. It’s not that important. We have it all anyway.”

As for Father Ted …”I’ll give you all the dirt,” says Dermot.

“Mrs Doyle is having Father Jack’s baby. And then there’s the gay thing between Father Dougal and I.

“We met on the set and started fooling around, wrestling and horseplay – you know the sort of thing – and then it turned into something more meaningful.”

He laughs at his joke, then leans forward.

“Seriously, we’ve discussed what headlines will come out when the papers catch up with us.

“Mine will say, ’FATHER TED ROGERS’ (a reference to the host of the former TV game show 3-2-1).

It will read, ’THREE in a Jacuzzi, TWO in a bed, I gave her ONE.”