It’s not hard to see how Brendan would later come up with a Mrs Brown plot line, set at Christmas time, when Agnes would be beside herself at the thought of her son Trevor arriving home from America.
Meantime, the death of Gerry O’Carroll resulted in a new dynamic in the house. Brendan had always been his mammy’s favourite, the chosen one. But with her husband gone, the focus on her tiny son sharpened.
‘The event changed everything. The day my daddy died, I released the birds. And my mammy spent a bit less time in local politics. I’d get much more of her attention. The attention of a genius.’
Back at school, however, in the summer of 1965, Brendan was in for an entirely unexpected surprise.
‘In my absence, the class had got a new teacher. Not a stand-in, I was told by the lads, but a real, full-time teacher. His name was Billy Flood. As a young man, Billy Flood believed he had a vocation to the Church. He began his journey to train as a Christian Brother but changed his mind. However, he still wanted to teach. I now know that Billy Flood was born to teach. He couldn’t have been more than 21 years old – and looked about 16. I took one look at this baby-faced, horn-rimmed eejit and thought, “He won’t last long” because we were quite an intimidating bunch and had scared off more than a few hopefuls in our time.
‘But here’s the first thing I noticed about him that was different: he wasn’t afraid of us. The second, which puzzled me even more, was that he actually seemed to like us.
‘Now, to the modern-day school kid, the change Billy Flood brought to our classroom will seem petty, but not to us, who had spent our previous school years being beaten senseless, having the Three Rs rammed into us, and in general being despised by the men who were charged with preparing us for life as good citizens.
‘This was not Mr Flood’s way. He taught us to sing. At first we thought he was a queer, the word we used back then for gay. Sing? Us? When he announced this, we laughed. Boy, how we laughed. Then we sang. And he moved from desk to desk, tapping a tuning fork and getting each of us to sing the note. Using this guide, he divided the class into three groups and had us perform first, second and third harmonies.
‘This took an age, for there were some of the lads that wouldn’t do it at first and some who sounded like frogs masturbating. But by one o’clock that afternoon we were singing “Three Blind Mice” in virtually perfect harmony. I didn’t know it then, but at that moment, on that September afternoon, thanks to the enthusiasm of a baby-faced young teacher, my life was about to change.’
Brendan hadn’t had a singing epiphany, or decided to launch himself as a pop star of the future (although he can certainly sing, as those who’ve witnessed his stand-up show will testify).
‘I knew that I could do something different. I didn’t know what it was, nor did I have the words to explain it, but I could feel that I was expressing myself. I knew a group of people together, singing, or whatever, could have a great time. Even in a school classroom.
‘One of the first things Mr Flood did was set up a library, in a Tayto Crisps box. I presume he used his own books from home. Then he put two of the hardest kids in the class in charge of it, so that protected it from miscreants but also gave it kudos. The very first book I took out was Treasure Island. I know today that I’m dyslexic, which explains why it took an age to read it, but I read it – and I loved it. I loved being transported to tiny islands on the high seas. I could feel the ship ploughing through the ocean, taste the salt of the sea water. It was magical. When I was finished, I returned it – well, you had to. It wasn’t like a real library. If you didn’t return it, you didn’t get fined, you got the shit kicked out of you by one of our “librarians” who had three ears between them.
‘I took another book out, but only read a bit of it. I put that one back and got Treasure Island out and read it again and again and again. Over the next three years, I must have taken it out fifteen times, and read it from cover to cover each time.’
Mr Flood had shown Brendan other worlds could exist in the imagination. He introduced him to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Brendan was mesmerised. The youngster realised now the power of invention, of creating wonderful characters and weaving life stories around them.
Brendan discovered this new-found power of storytelling could be utilised in other ways, too. ‘I’d now reached the age where I was doing things I should have been confessing to the priest, so I made things up.’
But of course he never imagined one day he’d make a career out of making up stories.
Mr Flood also instilled the absolute importance of education, ironically something Brendan hadn’t really experienced at home.
‘There was no such thing as free secondary school education back then. If you couldn’t afford to go onto the next level, you stayed in the primary school until you were fourteen and then let out to face the world. But Mr Flood told us one afternoon that Des O’Malley TD was about to change all that, and the only thing we needed to do in three years’ time was to pass an entrance exam. And he added he was determined that as many of us as possible would. And you know, we believed him.’
Meantime, Brendan had to undergo another test. His first kiss.
‘It was with Mardi Deegan, and I adored her. I was still ten, and I remember it was in the middle of winter. I remember it well because I had what used to be called a Number Eleven – two lines of snot running down my nose. Anyway, I took Mardi to The Casino cinema and all the other boys in the village were waiting to see if she would kiss me. Well, she did. And it was a big smack. I remember thinking, “I hope my nose is clean.” But when she pulled away there were two silver spots on her upper lip. I had made my mark. Everyone saw it, but no one told her. Surprisingly enough, she still speaks to me today.’
In the summer of 1966, Brendan visited his sister Maureen in London, and had a great time. But he didn’t realise he’d become too caught up in the occasion.
‘My brother-in-law took me to my first soccer match. It was at Wembley to see Mexico playing England in the World Cup. I nearly got lynched when I came back home to Ireland because everything I was wearing had a Union Jack on it.’
Aged 12 and a half, Brendan took his entrance exam and came second top, all ready to progress to secondary school after his birthday in September. But it seems the combined weight of Robert Louis Stevenson and Billy Flood couldn’t persuade him to carry on with his education.
He was too intent on getting to the next chapter. But he did take the time to write to sister Fiona in Toronto. Fiona had asked Brendan to write to her, but not to write too much because heavy letters were expensive to mail. He took her at her word. She would laugh when she opened the airmail envelope to read just two words, Dear Fiona . . .
Brendan played football now for local club Home Farm, and he remembers a club tour, but not so much for the playing.
‘We were on a trip to Blackpool, and we all went along to see The Sound Of Music. I came out singing all the songs. I’d seen a lot of Western films at The Casino, but for some reason Julie Andrews stuck in my mind.’
Perhaps he was already in close touch with his theatrical side. Not long after, Brendan went to the theatre for the first time, to see a children’s play It’s A Two Foot Six Inches Above The Ground World, at the Gate Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
The play depicted life from a kid’s perspective, with all the children played by adults. Brendan sat with his mouth open as wide as the River Liffey, captivated by the entertainers.
‘It was utter magic. When the curtain went down I told my mother that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I had found myself transported into another world. But it wasn’t just a place where my imagination could fly off to. I realised that the performers up there on stage had this amazing power over someone like me. This was incredible. I wanted some day to have that sort of power over an audience.’
But for the time being, he pushed that dream to the back of his head. Brendan had real life to be getting on with.
The Leprechaun
FINGLAS made moves towards modernity in the late 1960s when a bingo hall was built in the west side of the town, which also served as the football dressing rooms, the boxing club and the tenants’ association HQ. And a new cabaret house, the 600-seater Drake Inn, was built, where international stars such as Gene Pitney and Frank Ifield would appear and locals could relax and enjoy the talent.
However, Ireland’s education system was still locked in the Dark Ages. It’s almost unimaginable these days to consider a little boy could leave school aged just 12 and go to work full time.
But that’s exactly what Brendan did in the summer of 1967.
Legislation hadn’t quite yet been passed to make secondary education free to all, but more than likely, even if it had been, Brendan would not have taken up the opportunity. Why? He was always older than his years. And cocky. He believed he could make it in the world without a leaving certificate. And, of course, none of his family had made it through secondary, so a precedent had been set.
He also wanted money. He’d had a taste of it, with a newspaper round and selling kindling from a barrow. And it’s not hard to appreciate why he wanted to contribute to the family purse. Since his dad had passed away, money had been tight. Sometimes Brendan would be sent to bed at 5 p.m. because there was no dinner.
‘The Dublin mothers didn’t want the kids to be feeling hunger pains all night,’ he says with a wry smile.
‘I used to think I had two uncles called Vincent and Paul. It was only a few years later that I realised that the blokes who came round on a Tuesday to give us some money were from the charity, St Vincent de Paul.’
And there was the letter from America. It wasn’t just correspondence. It was money. It was a lifeline. It was the cheque or postal order that the relatives living abroad would send back home, from the likes of big sister Fiona who had emigrated to Canada.
One year, Maureen Junior came back to Dublin from England and bought her mother a fridge, telling her it would be fantastic, and she’d now be able to store the food, the milk etc. Her mammy thought it wonderful. But when the generous daughter returned the following year, she realised it wasn’t plugged in. Not as part of a drive to save energy, no. Brendan’s mammy might have been a genius, but she’d reckoned the fridge was a cupboard. And of course none of her friends had a fridge. How would she have known?
It seems that Billy Flood had already sensed his star pupil might not come back to school after the holidays, although Brendan himself didn’t know at this time. When the moment came for the summer break, Mr Flood chose to commemorate the passing, to say a thanks to the three-part harmony singers he’d been so in tune with.
Some would, of course, return to wait out the remaining two years, and one or two would make it into secondary school. But many would leave for good.
And he revealed his emotions to these angels with dirty faces in a scene that could have been written for the classic film, Goodbye Mr Chips.
‘Billy Flood gave all the kids a goody bag containing sweets and crisps. But my old brown paper bag was a little heavier. And inside it was a copy of Treasure Island. I gasped when I saw it. Inside the cover the teacher had written, “I stood and looked and my wonder grew, that such a small head could hold all that he knew.”
‘As I read this, he just looked me in the eye and said, “O’Carroll, I don’t know for sure what, but I tell you now, son, you will be something, something special.”
‘I was almost in tears. He was a wonderful bloke.’
Billy Flood would later go on to teach Marty Devany, Brendan’s future son-in-law, and enjoy a long career in education.
Meantime, Brendan knew what his mammy really needed wasn’t a fridge, but another income. And, although he was still 12, Brendan reckoned he was man enough to make it out there on his own. After all, his brothers had all left school at the same age. Why shouldn’t he get out there and act like a grown-up? On top of all that, Brendan’s natural precociousness, his determination to race forward into life, couldn’t be contained.
‘I asked me mammy to get me a job that summer. And because of her work as a trade unionist, she had lots of connections with the Hotel and Catering branch of the Transport and General Workers’ Union. And a new hotel had opened up in the centre of Dublin called The Scullion Hotel. So she made a phone call and I was sent along for an interview.
‘The head waiter was called Teddy Gough, and he took one look at me, and then called for the rest of the staff to appear. I was a bit taken aback at this because he then lined me up in front of everyone and announced, “Look at this one! I asked the union to send me a waiter and they’ve sent me a leprechaun!”’
Yet, Teddy took the leprechaun on. And the commis waiter instantly loved this new world, the American accents of the hotel guests, his new colleagues, and the wage was good at £1 18s 6d a week.
‘I was soon making four or five quid a week on tips. It was fantastic. So came the end of the summer and there was no way I was going back to school. I’d made my mind up. Meantime, my mother was away in Canada, doing work with the Teamsters Union. She’d be in touch every day making sure my uniform was ironed, all that stuff, but when school restarted, I didn’t.’
When Maureen O’Carroll returned from Canada, she had no idea her youngest son had dumped class to join the ranks of the full-time working classes.
‘Every morning I’d go down to the hotel, take off my school uniform, put it in a locker and put on my waiter’s uniform. Then, at three o’clock, which was when we had a break, I’d meet me mam, and go home and pretend to do my homework. At six, I’d go back to the hotel and my mother reckoned this was me working part-time.
‘And I got away with this for some time. The school didn’t even send out letters to truants like me. I guess they thought I just wasn’t going back and accepted the notion.
‘It was only one day at Christmas when me mammy was in a department store, she bumped into my Latin teacher, Mr Fidelius. He said, “Mrs O’Carroll, so nice to see you. How’s Brendan getting on?”
‘“Mr Fidelius, I was about to ask you the same thing!”
‘So I came home from “school” that day and my mother said to me: “Hi, Brendan. What homework have you got? How’s your Latin coming on?”
‘And I read out a few declensions, but that didn’t fool her. My mother had been a Latin teacher and she was still pretty good and she said, “No, no, Brendan. That’s first-year stuff.” She had me sussed, me mammy. And then she went feckin’ bananas. She yelled at me and I became so upset that she was upset.’
And Maureen O’Carroll was right to become upset. Brendan hadn’t been honest with her. And she felt conflicting emotions. Despite the fact she’d once been a teacher and had gone on to become an Irish MP, none of her children had made it through secondary school. And Maureen desperately wanted Brendan to do well. She knew he was highly intelligent.
Yet, she had let the rest of her kids go to work at the age of 12. And perhaps part of her acceptance of Brendan’s decision not to return to school was influenced by the fact that she couldn’t afford to send him on to secondary, that he’d simply be festering for the next two years in Gaybo’s.
Regardless, Brendan wasn’t prepared to go back to learning Latin verbs.
‘I protested I was doing what I wanted to do. And I argued my brothers were chefs, and if working in a hotel was good enough for them . . . And I so desperately didn’t want to go back to school.
‘So, reluctantly, she agreed. But she said that if I were going to be a waiter, it would be in the very best hotel where I could get training.’
That was how Brendan came to work for the Intercontinental Hotel, now called Jurys, and he was in his element.
‘I just loved the life. Who knew there were so many wondrous things about becoming a waiter, about the history of food, about culture, about artistry, about how phrases like Romanoff Sauce came about. It was creative; it was fantastic.
‘Ho
w could I not be captivated by this whole new world that had opened up to me?’
Brendan has always believed that if you take a job on you should do it to the best of your ability. Later, when he cleaned windows, he’d be an excellent window-cleaner. And if he goes into politics, as he has intimated he might, he may well go right to the top and become President of Ireland. (And who would bet against it?) Back in 1967, however, he vowed to become the very best waiter imaginable.
‘I created an original coffee, Café Diablo, which was amazing,’ he says, the pride in his voice audible.
But there were important things he hadn’t yet learned.
‘There were about twenty kids there at the time, like me, training to become waiters. Yet, after six months, I went home one night and realised that I hadn’t made a single friend. I’d look at myself in the mirror and think, “What is wrong with you?” I thought I was a nice enough guy, and I was a lot of fun. But then it dawned on me. I realised that I had too much to say for myself.
‘I just seemed to know too much. I was this little boy who, if someone had said to me the moon was made of green cheese, I’d have to rebuke them and say, “No, actually that’s a myth, it’s made of an iron core with a collection of cosmic particles . . .” and then I’d find myself sitting in the canteen on my own.
‘But once I realised why this was happening, I changed. If someone said to me, “Didn’t the moon look like a big piece of cheese last night?” I’d say something equally daft like “Cheese? No I thought it was made of ice cream.”’
Brendan was learning to downplay his intelligence. And, in coming up with gags, he’d win over even more people. Thanks to his new-found pragmatism, he made some new friends.
But no one could have mistaken Brendan for a shrinking violet. One holiday, Brendan took off up to the woods of Finglas, on the other side of town, to make his mark. Literally. He was carving his initials BOC on a tree when a gang of likely lads from the McKelvey area appeared (Brendan would later cheekily describe the area in Finglas East as an estate for ‘problem families’). The lads read him the riot act for his encroachment, telling this ‘little scud’ he should get back to his own area.
The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll Page 5