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Jon Kenny, the Irish comedian and actor best known for his role in ‘Father Ted‘, has passed away at the age of 66.
His wife, Margy, confirmed he died on Friday evening at a hospital in Galway after suffering a cardiac arrest earlier that day.
He was best known for his work opposite Pat Shortt in the comedy duo D’Unbelievables.
Jon, who had previously recovered from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his 40s, revealed in 2020 that his cancer had returned.
Paying tribute in a post on X (formerly Twitter), Shortt said he is devastated, adding that he feels lucky to have spent “so many years touring with Jon and learning from him”.
The 66-year-old had been receiving treatment for cancer and heart failure.
The County Limerick-born star also had many screen credits to his name including Father Ted, The Van, Les Misérables (1998), Angela’s Ashes, and The Banshees of Inisherin, in which he reunited with Pat Shortt.
Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Simon Harris said he learned of Jon’s death with “utmost sadness” and said he had the “ability, that very few people possess, to make his audiences crack up laughing with a glance or a single word”.
“Behind that seemingly effortless talent to joke, there was a gifted performer and an extremely deep thinker,” Harris said in a statement.
“Jon was an interesting and thoughtful person, he had some stunning dramatic performances on stage and screen and the country is still in stitches from the magic that was D’Unbelievables.”
Kenny was also an acclaimed singer, poet, and solo stand-up performer.
In a tribute, Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Micheál Martin described Kenny as “one of our most iconic actors and comedians”.
“Deeply saddened at the passing of Jon Kenny,” Mr Martin said in a statement.
“Through the D’Unbelievables, and his appearances on stage & screen, Jon made us smile. He was an entertainer to his core.”
Jon, along with his comedy soulmate Pat Shortt, formed D’Unbelievables in the late 1980s in Limerick.
Their sketches featured day-to-day life in the Republic of Ireland.
Perhaps their most memorable featured the pair as two bumbling Garda (Irish police) officers appealing for the public’s help on Crimebusters.
Pat played Garda Tom Walsh and Jon played Garda PJ Moloney.
The actor also had a memorable cameo as a blustering television host in the Eurovision episode of Channel 4′s Father Ted, which introduced him to an international audience.
Jon was diagnosed in his 40s with Non-Hodgkin’s Disease in 2000, which brought to an end the duo’s time together in the D’Unbelievables.
Speaking on The Oliver Callan Show on RTÉ Radio 1 in April, he said the diagnosis had left him with no choice but to “not do anything”.
“Over the space of two years I was on different forms of treatment,” he said.
“That went on for two years, and I got a stem cell transplant, thanks be to God, in James’s (hospital), and they sorted me out, and I motored on for another while.”
However, he told Oliver Callan that his cancer had returned.
“I had it there again; it came back again about three years ago, four years ago,” he said.
“So I had some operation to remove some of my left lung, and that was good – good luck to that.
I’ve been lucky now because my chemo is working, so I’ve been grand, you know?
“But just in the middle of it all, just for the craic of it – you know when you’re getting on with things? – and after I had my second chemo, I had heart failure.
“Throw that in the mix, like. A nice little cocktail of things there to be getting on with.”
As well as his career on television and in films, Jon also was highly regarded as a stage actor.
He appeared in John B Keane’s The Matchmaker, Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer at The Abbey Theatre, and Katie Holly’s dark comedy Crowman, a one-man show in which he portrayed 10 characters.
