From 'Halls Pictorial Weekly' in the 1970s to 'Father Ted' in the 1990s, Frank Kelly has been a constant on the comic-side of Irish showbiz. He tells Brian Boyd just how far positive thinking can take you
If not it all, then Frank Kelly has seen and done most of it. Actor, comic, writer, singer, novelist, and no mean fiddle player, he has occupied a strange place in Irish entertainment over the last 40 odd years. With his multi-disciplinary skills, he's always been there or thereabouts, but never quite fully appreciated, the way others of demonstrably less talent have been. And in the curious ways of the entertainment industry, his first 35 years of arduous work will probably remain forever in the shadow of one supporting role in a sitcom for a British television station. Everyone knows this and is complicit in it - thus the big billboard poster for his next bit of work, a panto at the Gaiety, "Featuring Frank Kelly of Father Ted".
It's a good five years now since the last cup of tea was served on Craggy Island, but Frank Kelly is cheerfully philosophical about how a lifetime in showbiz can still be reduced to four single words, those words that follow him around as if he were a pied piper of catch-phrases, four words that the world takes delight in shouting at him on the street.
"All the time, all the time," he says, "it's a constant, you could be anywhere at anytime of day and you'll hear it, particularly from schoolkids - "feck", "drink", "arse", "girls" - I'm resigned to it by now."
While the words are inextricably linked with him, the curious thing is he doesn't "own" them and as such can't "use" them: the character of Father Jack is owned by Hat Trick, the independent production company behind Fr Ted, and as such Frank Kelly cannot take to the stage in a dog collar barking out his character's catch-phrases, even if he wanted to.
This, though, is of little concern to the producers of the upcoming Sleeping Beauty and the expectant panto audience. Kelly is down to play a character called King Jack (of all the names . . .) and will be barking out dyspeptic phrases to beat the band.
Now in his late 50s, Kelly is beyond being bemused at his recently acquired cult status and professes a good-while-it-lasted attitude to the high-profile turn in his career.
"As an actor, you're used to roles coming to an end and you move on, it's just strange that people are far more aware of some parts than others. For instance, people are saying that this upcoming role in the Gaiety is a return to Panto for me, but I never left it, I've been doing Panto on and off for 40 years. I like it, but it really is hard, physical work, and what I expect, from past experience, is that over the next few months I will lose at least one-and-a-half stone in weight . . . it's all that running up and down stairs, and doing those elaborate costume changes in double-quick time. But then I've always been pretty fit, I swim, when I can, in the Forty Foot (in Sandycove, near his Blackrock home) and walk up and down mountains."
He has a shrug-of-the-shoulders attitude to his semi-reprisal of the Father Jack character in the panto: "There's a flavour of him in there, I suppose, and the same facial attributes, but it's a different approach, I think. With Father Ted what I had to do was a very particular minimalist style of acting, it's called 'numb buttock' acting, you're sitting there for 14 minutes and then get to deliver one line."
He was head-hunted for the Father Jack role, because the show's writers were big fans of his work on Halls Pictorial Weekly, which ran for 12 years on RTÉ from 1970. Describing the show as "subversive in a folksy manner", it was the perfect platform for his protean and versatile comic ability. Between HPW, the long running Glen Abbey radio show, Newsbeat (an early RTÉ TV satire), the Only Slaggin' radio shows, comedy songs and comedy novels, he has operated as a one-man band over the decades, and given that his forte was comic satire, he was just unfortunate to be living in a country which, for whatever reasons (Church, government), never really understood (or was afraid of) the genre, and by extension his abilities.
"I would have been really influenced by the Beyond The Fringe people (comedians Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller) - in fact, I worshipped them," he says. "In terms of what they were doing with satire, they really broke the mould; before them it was something different. What we were doing, though, on Hall's Pictorial Weekly was different, in that we were dealing with a range of very different people - characters like Conor Cruise O'Brien, Michael O'Leary, Ritchie Ryan and Liam Cosgrave. What people might be surprised to hear is that we had full editorial control over the programme, it was a point of principle, although it is sad that many of the tapes from those 12 years were wiped and can't be seen again.
"I remember auditioning for a role during the 1960s and it was with Jonathan Miller. The second I walked into the room it was obvious that the part wasn't for me. So once we got that out of the way, we just sat there and talked about satire; that was very interesting."
He got involved with acting while at UCD studying Law (he was an enthusiastic member of the college's Dramsoc, alongside Fergus and Rosaleen Linehan), and was called to the Bar, but turned down the opportunity to pursue an acting career. Frequently out of work, he was offered work as a sub-editor on the Irish Press and later moved to the Irish Independent.
As soon, however, as he found himself "permanent and pensionable" (an archaic journalistic practice), he resigned. "I was married with two children at the time, and this was Ireland in the 1960s, everyone thought I was mad leaving this pensionable job, which I liked, to throw myself at the mercy of the acting world," he says. "Back then, and still now, I always hated the idea that I would know what I would be doing in five years time. It's always been a perverse idea of mine and I've often wondered about that streak in my character. I think it's a form of overkill - I remember years back knowing some people who had TB, who had been cured and then went on to become weight-lifters. It's a form of overcompensation, and the same with me - I always took the less safe option, I'm very glad that I did, but I would say that acting is no job for anybody who is going to be damaged by rejection or humiliation."
From starting out in music hall at the Eblana, in Dublin, with Cecil Sheridan and later working for four years as Jack Cruise's "feed", alongside pantos, summer revues, and collaborations with Jimmy O'Dea, he has played "most every venue the length and breadth of the country", and it would be easier to name aspects of Irish showbiz life he hasn't been involved in, rather than the opposite.
"What got me through a lot of the ups and downs of the acting world over the years is a real gung-ho attitude to the profession. I've always been quite self-assured in a 'don't give a fuck' sort of way. I've hitch-hiked around places, done labouring jobs. Also in my work, I never distinguished between 'legit' acting and the other work I've done. I used to do 16-hour days, working in the Gate Theatre in a 'legit' role then doing rehearsals for a comic role. I'm a very positive thinker, you have to be in this game, in fact, I really abhor negative thinking, I find it destructive. You have to create things for yourself."
He's just finished two high-profile films - in the first he plays Pierce Brosnan's father in the upcoming Evelyn, and in Toronto he filmed an X-Files-style sci-fi feature called Lexx in which he plays a priest - "but a nice, philanthropic one".
Over 40 years in the profession, he now thinks he's finally figured out what has kept him in gainful employment. "In the freelance world, it really helps if you can build up a 'brand image' of yourself, and I think that's what I've done through all the different work over the years. It's a sort of hallmark, people know you can do a certain thing very well and that has its own momentum."
The only role he really wants now is that of "a tough police inspector - I really fancy that". But he's long since given up trying to analyse the whys and wherefores of his profession.
"Who you are or what you are in this business, I've never really found out - and if there is a mirror there, I certainly don't want to look into it."
Sleeping Beauty opens at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, on Sunday.
