Quite suddenly, or so it seemed, Ireland became a multi-cultural society. It happened in or around 1996, and caught everyone by surprise. The television comedy series, Father Ted, dramatised this moment in an episode first screened in March 1998. Father Ted, to relieve the boredom of having to clean the house, gives Father Dougal a knowing smile, puts a ‘coolie’ lampshade on his head, pulls back the skin on either side of his eyes to narrow them to a slit, peels his upper lip back over his teeth, and then proceeds to mimic a Chinese pidgin-English accent, saying ‘Oh! Ho! I am Chinese if you please’. The audience laughs, and Father Ted goads Dougal for appearing rather dumbstruck by his ‘Ching Chong Chinaman’ impression, but Ted's cheeky grin soon disappears when he turns to find three Chinese people looking at him through his window. Ted looks aghast to Dougal for an explanation, and is told that the Chinese people are the Yin family living in ‘that whole Chinatown area’. ‘There's a Chinatown in Craggy Island?’, gasps Ted, and then admonishes Dougal for not telling him this: ‘Dougal, I wouldn't have done a Chinaman impression if I'd known there was going to be a Chinaman there to see me doing a Chinaman impression. … They'll think I'm a racist’.