Ardal O'Hanlon horrified Fr Ted bosses with tight haircut
Ardal O’Hanlon has revealed he had to wear a special wig for the second series of Father Ted after getting a spur-of-the-moment haircut for his wedding, writes .
The Irish actor (52) said the show’s producers had a “look of horror” on their faces when he returned from his nuptials to wife Melanie looking “unrecognisable” as Fr Dougal McGuire.
The gormless cleric was famed, among other characteristics, for his mop of dark blonde hair.
The producers subsequently had to scramble to have a bespoke wig made to order, resulting in a hair-raising hit to the show’s budget, said O’Hanlon.
The second series of the iconic sitcom was screened in 1996 with famed storylines including ‘The Lovely Girls Competition’ and a Christmas special set in the lingerie section of a department store.
“We had shot the video inserts, so all the location stuff for the second series of Father Ted, just before Christmas. And then just after Christmas I got married,” he said.
“I was feeling pretty rough on the day of my wedding - a very special day and my best man had taken me out the night before so I went to a barber’s and I got a close shave and I got my hair cut.
“I went back into the studios – this is two weeks after we’d already done quite a bit of filming, went back into studio to shoot the whole series but I’d no hair,” added the father-of-three.
“It was really short, unrecognisable. I remember just the look of horror when I went back into the studio and they had to film for eight weeks and it didn’t match, it just didn’t match at all, it couldn’t have been more different,” O’Hanlon told the BBC’s The One Show, saying they were getting a scoop on the wig story, a “major revelation” and “a first”.
“So, they had to manufacture a wig at very short notice. I think it cost pretty much the budget for the second series to make this wig. So, during the entire second series, that’s a wig to match my own hair.”
The Monaghan-born actor currently stars as detective Jack Mooney in the new series of BBC drama ‘Death in Paradise’.
