I’ve never heard it in the US except on stuff from Ireland.
I think so, but I’m not sure if it was as popular before Father Ted aired 
Feck is very Irish. I’ve heard it all my life. Joyce used it his books.
Strangely enough, it’s interchangable with fuck in every way apart from the sexual one. I’ve never heard anyone say “Jaysus, I’d love to feck that fine thing over there” or anything like it.
But other than that feck is used in all the wonderful ways we used fuck.
e.g.
I got fecked out of the pub early last night.
Will you ever just feck off.
Well I’ll be fecked. That solution did work.
Abso-fecking-lutly.
and on and on.
Since Fr. Ted’s popularitly and also the amount of Irish over in the UK it surprises me that some Brits wouldn’t be aware of “feck”. I use it and words like “craic”(fun) in front of Brits all the time and have never had a problem.
Did it ever creep North of the border? I really didn’t hear it till Father Ted aired, then you couldn’t ever be far away from someone saying it.
Maybe you up North were too foul mouthed to begin with to use such a tame variant
Just a tip for all you non Irish/UK Dopers, if you haven’t already heard of it: Channel 4’s 4OD service (4 On Demand) has all the Father Ted episodes available for streaming and downloading, free. It is a service I feel obliged to tell everyone about. 
Oh, and any Ted fans will also love Black Books, also on 4OD, co-written by Graham Lineham of Ted fame. And check out Peep Show as well. Oh dear Og, Peep Show…
I know I’m in a minority but I find Black Books profoundly unfunny. Peep Show is great though.
Yes, surprised me too, especially since it had been an Englishman who turned me on to Father Ted, and it was a BBC series popular in England. Perhaps these had just been over here a long time.
Not meaning to be nit-picky here, ( but I shall : ) but wasn’t it Channel 4/R.T.E.? Sorry, but I do find it funny that anything at all good has to be assumed to be from Auntie Beeb.
The trouble is that Channel 4 actually used to be good, much better than B.B.C. then then it went all tiresome. Tiresome tedious trash. So terrible that if I called it “tiresome to the max”, that this tiresome saying “to the max” might have been the kind of thing that Channel 4 would actually have taken happily as an accolade.
Feck!
Arse!
Drink!
Oh, and I’m sure I never had heard of “feck” before “Father Ted”, but “craic”, “crack” of any spelling, yes. Oh yes! 
I’m sure you’re right. Yes, I tend to assume everything comes from the BBC. I’ve heard this mysterious Channel 4 mentioned before come to think of it but always assumed it, too, was a BBC channel.
Not RTE, just Ch4. RTE were pussies and passed on it because they were too scared of pissing off Catholic Ireland. They had to get the backing from across the water.
And thanks be to the Holy Stone of Clonrichert(now a Class II Relic) that they did.
I was under the mistaken impression that feck was just a “pretend” swear word similar to “naff off” which was used in the TV comedy prison Porridge. The purpose of these words was to enable the characters to use bad language in a form acceptable to TV.
I miss Father Ted! Now all we have is the Vicar and she’s fine and all, but she’s not Father Ted!
Another wonderful Dougal thing was when he was telling Ted he saw a ghost the night before and described it as having gray hair but a young face and some other details that made it apparent that Ted was right when he said, “Are you sure it was a ghost Dougal? Are you sure it wasn’t me?” Well, I wish I could quote it verbatim because it was funnier than that.
That Sister Assumpta thing is the best though.
I always enjoyed how Dougal thought organized religion was ridiculous. And his Skelator bedding was pretty funny too.
I just started watching the series on DVD (I don’t think I’ve ever seen all of the episodes, and certainly not in order–I used to TiVo it when it was on BBC America) and it seems that the episode with the carnival thing (tunnel of goats, duck startling, cat spinning, pond of terror, etc) was the pilot? If so, damn, what a way to start off a series with a bang! I’ve seen that episode so many times and it still makes me laugh even sitting watching it in a room all by myself.
And when Dougal’s acting as a substitute milkman, and he finally realizes all those women in the houses he was stopping at were answering the door naked, in expectation of the regular milkman!
Sadly its not even close to being true anymore… Only things from BBC in last five years I’ve rated was the likes of Monkey Dust (not a Gervais fan). I suppose Mighty Boosh is ok…
Channel 4 did used to be the best channel in the uk… I left the uk for about five years, and came back, and it had turned into a channel of freak shows and shows about their own shows (big brother, shows about big brothers current events).
Still, the IT Crowd was quite funny… Another one linked to Father Ted…
Unfortunately this is only available to Irish/UK Dopers. It’s blocked for anyone in any other country.
It’s the closest in spirit to Father Ted. I thought it would be terrible from the trailers, but it was good enough for me to want to catch the repeats.
Black Books is shite. I hate it, hate it, hate it. That might just because I work in a bookshop myself and am a grumpy alcoholic. Too close to the bone!
**Yojimbo **and Pushkin, in my experience, I’ve heard buckin’ more than feckin’ in Northern Ireland.
Related to Father Ted, at every protest (Nice Treaty, Anti-Globalisation, Anti-Iraq War etc) I’ve seen pics from in Dublin in recent years there’s always a few wags with “Down With This Sort Of Thing” placards.