Lissa Evans, left, with Father Ted director Declan Lowney, centre and Ardal O’Hanlon in 1995

CHALK Farm author Lissa Evans – praised for rescuing the Hampstead novel from “pretension” and “middle class” morality – also produced one of Britain’s most popular TV comedies.

Back in 1995 Lissa, then working for Hat Trick Productions, was asked if she would mind taking over the reins to become producer of Channel 4’s Father Ted for two seasons.

Now her new book, Picnic On Craggy Island, describes with great hilarity (warts and all) the making of the madcap satire on the Irish priesthood.

It was literary reviewer Amanda Craig in The Spectator magazine in 2020 who described Evans’s novel, V for Victory, a wartime story about fostering, as “rescuing the Hampstead novel from its reputation of being preoccupied by pretension and middle-class morality”.

Lissa is well-known for historical novels, many of which take place in Camden and Hampstead.

In her new book she talks about the joys, and occasional woes, of being in charge of Father Ted.

For those not a fan, or the few still not acquainted with the highly acclaimed series, written by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, it’s about three somewhat eccentric priests and a woman housekeeper living together on an island off the Irish coast.

They are Father Ted, friendly and well meaning. He often goes on demos but rather than stick to the issues, declares: “Down with this type of thing.” There’s Father Dougal, young and hapless, with an air of sweet oblivion. And housekeeper Mrs Doyle, well known for trying to get the priests to have yet another cup of tea: “You will, you will, you will.” She is also famous for her falls, often during the housework.

Lissa writes: “She would take a hesitant step, wobble very slightly and then disappear out of shot with a beatific expression and the beautiful, tragic impetus of a mid­flight swan hit by a crossbow.”

Then there’s Father Jack – a bit of a drinker, to put it mildly. He’s famous for sitting in a chair and yelling: “Drink! Feck! Arse!” Everyone loved Jack. Lissa writes: “He looked so revolting that nobody wanted to sit near him if he ate in the catering bus at lunch­time, and yet any public appearances he made were greeted with universal joy.”

Every day of the rehearsal he would sit “patiently in a chair while scabs, crusts, scurf, filth and cascades of ear wax were added to his features, topped off with an opaque contact lens.”

There were times when Evans would literally cry with laughter, like when Ted wins a Golden Cleric Award for rescuing eight priests from Ireland’s biggest lingerie department.

Lissa writes: “After a thousand hours spent on location and in rehearsal rooms, in studios, in edits and in dubs, seeing and hearing the same jokes over and over and over again, they still make me laugh.”

She takes readers through many of the most popular episodes of the comedy. Like the scene when Jack discovers that his drinks cabinet is empty. “You won’t find any there, Father,” says Ted, as Jack rages.

“I’ve put them in a very safe place.” For a couple of seconds we see the “very safe place”: it’s a cave halfway up a sheer cliff­face, its interior full of bottles of whisky.

But the book also contains some real-life sadness.

Actor Dermot Morgan, who played Father Ted, was just 45 when he died of a heart attack in 1998. It happened one day after the last ever episode of the three-season show. Then, nine years ago actor Frank Kelly, who played Father Jack, 77, also died.

Lissa, who won a Bafta for Father Ted, remembers the trigger for writing the book. It was an evening at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival in 2022. She was supposed to be interviewing Ardal O’Hanlon (Dougal) about his new novel, but his plane from Dublin was cancelled and the festival was left with a gap in the programme.

“I ended up going on stage and offering to talk about Father Ted. I didn’t have anything planned, I simply said to the audience: “Suggest an episode and I’ll tell you everything I remember about it,” and an hour later, they were still suggesting and I was still talking.

“It was huge fun, and a reminder (as if I needed one) not only of how much love there is still for the series, but of how distinctly I remembered the episodes.”

Lissa, a former doctor, has also written about suffragettes training on Hampstead Heath in the late 1920s, in her novel Old Baggage. It is part of a trilogy, together with Crooked Heart and V for Victory, mainly set around Hampstead and Kentish Town.

She said: “I love Hampstead Heath and when my daughters were small we almost seemed to live there! And I particularly love the Ladies’ Pond, though only in nice weather.”

• Picnic on Craggy Island: The Surreal Joys of Producing Father Ted. By Lissa Evans, Doubleday, £13.65