My connections with Dermot Morgan go back to the mid‐90s when I promoted a lot of music and also some comedy and satire around the north‐east, mostly in Dundalk but also sometimes in Drogheda and other towns, as well.

Clip in which Twink reminisces about her work on The Live Mike, with two clips featuring Dermot.

The Mass in London yesterday for the entertainer, Mr Dermot Morgan, was told he was a man of immense kindness and love. The parish priest of St Margaret’s in south-west London, Father Alexander Sherbrooke, said he had not known Dermot Morgan before he was asked to administer the Last Rites to him in the early hours of Sunday morning. But he knew he was a man of “immense kindness and love … and somewhat ironically they were priestly qualities”.

Friends and colleagues of Dermot Morgan yesterday agreed that his extraordinary comic ability was coupled with an inability to relax.

It started with the hapless and hilarious Big Gom and the Imbeciles in UCD’s Theatre L (the eponymous crooner being a send-up of that oversized Thomist of the country and Irish persuasion) and it ended tragically and prematurely 10 years ago after a triumphant second series from the surreal Craggy Island, home of the child-priest Fr Dougal, the satantic Fr Jack, the demented Mrs Doyle and the presiding genial, Fr Ted Crilly.

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.

Dermot Morgan, who played C4’s Father Ted, was one of the world’s lovely men. I know, because I was privileged to spend several of his final few days with him.

Mike Murphy reflects on his career on the Late Late Show, featuring some reminiscing about working with Dermot on The Live Mike.

Shortly after I was appointed minister for justice, myself and a bunch of people from the office went to see Dermot Morgan’s one-man show in Dublin. We filled a row. As was inevitable, Morgan started to do his P. Flynn impersonation, striding around the theatre and through the crowd like a teacher firing comments in a thicker-than-lead Mayo accent.

Even now I cannot believe Dermot Morgan is dead.