This article is from page 33 of the 2008-03-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 33 JPG
KILFENORA is_ slowly — starting to return to normal after the week that belonged to Fr Ted. Hundreds of revellers, most of them dressed as priests, nuns and cups of tea, de- scended on the village for the first Fr Ted Festival ever to take place in OE IKe
The week was packed with many events, including an informal ques- tions and answers session with the Fr Ted creators.
“T think that the questions and an- swers session with Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews was one of the real highlights for a lot of people, it was really good. It was great fun,
people shouted up questions from the audience and they answered them. There was a lot of chat about how the series was made and questions like that,” said event organiser Janet KE Merirreaee
“We have a little play before that, a drama group from Athenry put on a reduced Father Ted over 15 min- utes with little segments from loads of the episodes. Besides that the one thing that people really loved was the Cole
“The lovely girls competition was a great success as well. Everyone had a ereat laugh out of it. Katie Vaughan from Vaughan’s Pub in Kilfenora won the competition in the end but it was a close one. She was great craic
though. I saw her yesterday, days af- ter the competition, and she was still wearing her crown and her sash.”
The festival had a big economic im- pact on the area, bringing a host of tourist to north Clare in the normally quiet month of February.
“People were staying in town and as far away as Lisdoonvarna and Ennistymon. Local people had their houses rented out and all the local bed and breakfasts were full,’ con- tinued Janet.
“We are definitely looking at run- ning the event again next year. We have to look carefully at the possibil- ity of making it any bigger because the infrastructure just isn’t here for that. We just about coped with the
numbers that we had.
‘“Kilfenora is the place where most of the series was filmed but some was filmed in Ennistymon, so mov- ing part of it to Ennistymon next year is something that we would look at. But Kilfenora is the real spiritual home of it.”
Following the Kilfenora Festival, the second annual Aran Islands Ted- Fest took place over the weekend.