The greatest tribute I can pay to Dermot Morgan is to confess that upon hearing the tragic news of his death, my initial reaction was to speculate that the the world was being duped by a brilliant hoax engineered by Morgan himself, Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews.

Think of it. You've just finished filming the third series of one of the most popular sit-coms in British television history and the first episode is due to be screened in a week. What better way to publicise it than to fake the death of the actor who plays the leading character?

True, Father Ted's profile is such that the show doesn't actually need much publicity, but my feeling was that the lads would have done it anyway, for a laugh.