The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll

by Beacom, Brian

  Yet, while Brendan was a Sheridan fan, the Saturday night star that shone brightest for him was Hal Roach, the Irish comedy legend whose catchphrase was, ‘Write it down.’

  ‘He was a genius. He stood, his left heel tucked into the arch of his right foot, his hand pulling on an invisible beard as if he were searching for the next story. He’d come out with surreal gags like: “Murphy found himself very late one night in London in the Underground subway station. He walked along to the escalator. And on the escalator it was written, ‘Dogs must be carried on the escalator.’ And he thought, ‘God, where am I going to find a dog at this hour of the night?’”

  ‘I watched and learnt and laughed and laughed. I would serve him a cup of coffee after his act and then I’d go home and do his whole stand-up routine for my mother, who would be in stitches.

  ‘One night, I worked up the courage and said to him, “Mr Roach, I want to be a comedian.”

  ‘“Son, there is no such thing as a comedian under thirty years of age.”

  ‘“Mr Roach, I think I am going to be the biggest comedian in Ireland before I’m twenty-five.”

  ‘“My God. I think I’m going to have one of my turns!”’

  Brendan learned a great deal from Hal Roach, about comic timing, about movement and expression.

  ‘Look closely at Mrs Brown. Even Agnes Brown’s voice has a little bit of Hal in there, if you listen closely.’

  While talking to Hal Roach, Brendan had articulated what had always been inside his head. He already knew he was funny. Other waiters constantly told him he was funny. But for the first time he had admitted he wanted to be a comedian. Brendan had had the thought in his head for some time. But he had never had the confidence to release it. He would have been laughed at, he felt. Now, though, here he was working with a man who’d had a career in the business.

  But how to achieve his stated ambition? Brendan took his first step into the entertainment world a year later with a stint on ARD, Alternative Radio Dublin, where he appeared on a kids’ show, as Uncle Brendy – The Kiddies’ Friend. Brendan had read in the Dublin Herald how the radio station was looking for volunteers and had offered his services. Yet he was drawn to comedy, and was helped by a chance encounter with bearded Irish entertainer Brendan Grace.

  Grace was hugely popular across the country, famous for his ‘Bottler’ act, where he’d dress up as a scampish schoolboy (echoes of Jimmy Krankie) and appear regularly at venues like the Drake Inn.

  One night, the two Brendans got talking and the youngster agreed to go to work for the legend as his assistant, driving him around and making sure he was looked after. The young O’Carroll hoped greatness would rub off on him and he watched and learned and helped his comedy master with his scripts.

  After a couple of years, the Sorcerer and his Apprentice parted, but not before Brendan reckoned he had learned enough to try his hand as a solo performer.

  ‘What I learned from Brendan Grace was if you tell the audience you’re a star, they’ll believe you. But you can’t go out half-hearted.’

  This was Brendan playing the part. And when a Dublin-wide talent competition was held in the Drake Inn, Brendan entered as a stand-up comedian. Incredibly, he won the £100 prize. Just as importantly, he was now recognised in the community as a funny guy.

  ‘Brendan became a star that night,’ says Gerry Browne, who would later become Brendan’s partner, and who was working that night as a glass collector.

  ‘He went up there on stage and blew the audience away, telling them little stories about his life in Finglas, stuff everyone could identify with. It was like watching a young Billy Connolly. Brendan had that hall in stitches.’

  Yet, although his mammy had told him he could fly, waiters don’t drop trays and become entertainers. Not when they’re from Finglas and financially bereft. Do they? And Maureen O’Carroll didn’t ever say, ‘Brendan, you really should be on the stage.’ Hers was a quiet encouragement, and he knew his mammy would always support whichever path he took.

  But she wasn’t so quiet in other areas. Every so often arguments would break out, the fierceness of which could have necessitated negotiation by UN peacekeeping forces.

  Once, Brendan took his mother to Quinn’s supermarket and he was in a hurry, ready to get off to a football match. Maureen went to get some shopping, saying she’d be five minutes at most. Twenty minutes later, no Mammy. So Brendan approached the security guards at the front of the store and told them his mother was inside, but she had no money in her purse. He added she had a mental condition and would most likely steal everything she could get her hands on. Could they just remove her safely? Maureen was thrown out, effin’ and blindin’ as she was bundled into the car.

  Later that night, she was still irate, and still keeping up the argument until Brendan said, ‘I’m tellin’ you now, Ma. If you keep this up I’m going to steal your teeth.’

  And she did. And he did. Before you could say ‘Steradent’, he had her false teeth in his hand. And he put them in his pocket and went out for the night.

  But while Maureen O’Carroll and her son would often go at it hammer and tongs and niggle each other constantly, they laughed just as much. She loved the laughter he created. And she knew he adored her. Even if he stole the teeth from her mouth.

  But what he also took from his mother was her mantra: never compromise. And grab life with both hands while you can. As a teenager, that already made sense to him. He’d lost his dad, one of his best friends in John Breen. And now the other . . .

  ‘Jimmy Matthews was killed in a car accident, aged eighteen, on the night of his engagement.’

  Brendan adds, reflectively: ‘Never did the death of Jimmy or John scare me. I was never afraid of death. I always thought I was invincible.’

  But in real life Brendan was less Superman and more Clark Kent, still a freelance waiter and hoping that work such as Aer Lingus Catering would take him on to bigger things. Such as the Irish Open Golf Championship.

  ‘I’d work at the golf for four days, for example, and get a month’s wages. One time I picked up a thousand-pound tip. And at the end of the stint I bought a car on the money I made.’

  He had the car, and the girlfriend. And with the girlfriend came the girlfriend’s mother. Dolly Dowdall was another larger-than-life Dublin woman to whom Brendan became close. (He would later dedicate his novel, The Chisellers, to Dolly). Dolly Dowdall worked in the street markets, just like Agnes. Her husband was ill with a bad back, just like Agnes. And Dolly had to become the breadwinner. Dolly also lived for her family; she battled to make sure her five girls grew up to be fine young ladies. And Dolly would later be absorbed into the character of Agnes Brown, both funny and wicked.

  But she had money problems. Or rather, she had a problem paying money back.

  ‘Dolly borrowed nine quid from a money-lender, to pay it back at a pound a week. But she got into difficulties. And after a couple of months, the debt, with compound interest, was over five hundred.

  ‘So I went along to see this loan shark, who was based in a Dublin pub. In an office off the side of the bar, the “secretary” said the guy I was looking for wasn’t in.

  ‘“I’ll wait.”

  ‘“But he could be out all day,” said the barmaid.

  ‘“Well, I’ll still wait.”’

  And he did. He sat down and waited. And as he looked around he could see the office from the bar. And he waited. And he saw the secretary pick up the phone and speak very quietly.

  Brendan realised there was an adjacent office.

  ‘I thought to myself, “He’s here!”

  ‘So I walked right through the office door, and up to the guy’s desk. And I slammed the debt books right on top of it. And I said to him, “You will charge no more money on this account. That’s the end of it.”’

  And he slammed the books down again, just for added dramatic effect. And made his grand exit.

  ‘Except that I didn’t,’ he says, with a look of mo
ck horror on his face.

  ‘I had worked up to this big moment and was so focused on being angry instead of walking out the door, I charged straight into a walk-in cupboard. And I slammed it behind me.

  ‘And now, here I was, standing in the dark in a cupboard. And then I had to walk back out again, and walk out the real office door.’

  Brendan might have had to suffer a little ignominy, but Dolly Dowdall never again heard from the money-lender.

  Yet, while he solved Dolly’s immediate problem, he was doing his best to pay the mortgage at home in Finglas, to make ends meet, working all the hours he could. He would finish waiting tables at seven o’clock and then start a cleaning job at nine.

  ‘I took a job working for Jeyes, the company that makes toilet products.’

  He adds, grinning, ‘And here’s the thing: I love cleaning away. It’s quite weird. If I go into a supermarket in America and find myself in the detergent aisle, I’m salivating. But I loved the job. I made sure I was a great cleaner. In fact, I introduced a new cleaning system in that place and the bosses agreed to introduce it. It saved them a fortune.’

  He has an explanation for the hard work, other than the satisfaction you can achieve from doing a job well.

  ‘Somewhere in my mind, I’m convinced that I’m lazy, that I’d rather be on the couch watching television. And because I know that, I work doubly hard to prove I’m not lazy.

  ‘So when I was in Jeyes I wanted to run the factory. If I see something, in any business, I try and sort out a problem.’

  Meanwhile his relationship with Doreen was moving forward. Brendan says it had its own momentum. ‘We grew to be great friends. And when I joined a football club, Doreen got on with the other players’ girlfriends. It was all cosy, and everyone we knew seemed to be getting married all of a sudden. And before we knew what was happening, we were getting married too.’

  Brendan, heavily prompted by his mother, went to see a priest to make his confession, with the idea that his soul would be scrubbed clean for the start of his new married life.

  ‘But instead I ended up getting into an argument with the priest. He’d asked me to confess how much I drank, and I told him I didn’t really drink much at all, which was true. But he insisted I was lying and I should confess all. I was fuming. And that was me done with confessing.’

  The wedding itself wasn’t the wondrous day he’d have hoped for.

  ‘I remember thinking it didn’t feel like magic. But then, I couldn’t picture life without Doreen either. And it wasn’t that there was someone else in my life. She was the business.

  ‘I also remember panicking a bit, thinking, “What if this isn’t real love, it’s more a brother/sister love? And what if someone bumps into me in the street in five years’ time, and I suddenly fall in love . . .?”

  ‘But I reconciled myself and reminded myself that I had made a promise.’

  Brendan and Doreen, both aged 19, announced their wedding and, on 18 July 1975, they walked down the aisle of St Canice’s Church in Finglas.

  Brendan had told his mother that the Archbishop of Dublin would be joining the couple in Holy Matrimony. She laughed. This was of course another of Brendan’s wind-ups. Except that it wasn’t. The Archbishop did indeed perform the ceremony.

  Maureen O’Carroll was delighted. And she would drop it into every conversation for months to come. However, his mammy wasn’t convinced the relationship would work out.

  ‘She felt it could go either way. My mother wasn’t sure if we were going through life at the same speed. She’d say, “Opportunity is a train that goes in a circle. And it keeps coming round. But it never stops. And the only way you can get on that train is to jump on it. But you can’t jump with a weight on your back. Whoever is with you will have to jump by themselves. And someday, whoever is with you will have to jump on that train.

  ‘“That’s the way it will happen, Brendan. I hope that Doreen will jump with you.”’

  Would Doreen jump?

  He’s a Lucky God

  THERE was no doubt that if Brendan could see a train going past headed towards opportunity, he’d leap onto it.

  Now aged 21, he and Doreen were renting a house in Donaghmede, North Dublin.

  ‘I reckoned I would buy it when a mate who owned it emigrated. But at this time, you had to have a third of the price for a deposit and to have been saving it for four years with the bank.

  ‘However, a pal who worked for the Corporation said he could get me a Corporation loan. The house was nine thousand quid and he said he’d fix this up, no problem.’

  But there was a problem.

  ‘The next week when we met up he said he couldn’t get me a loan. I asked why and he said, “Because you’ve already got a mortgage.”

  ‘“What?”

  ‘“Yes, you own a house in Finglas that you’re paying up.”

  ‘It was my mother’s house, of course. And I offered to pay off the loan on my mother’s but I was told that as a citizen you can only get a Corporation loan once, it was designed to give people a start on the ladder.

  ‘So I told me mammy the story and said, “What shall we do?”

  ‘And she came back, immediately, with, “Here’s what you do. You and Doreen move in here.” Of course, I had mixed feelings about this. So I said to me mam, “Look, I don’t want to stay here. I want to move up. And when I move up I want you to move up with us.”

  ‘She asked where I was planning to move to and I told her about the dream house in Ashbourne, seven miles up the road from Finglas, but a world away.

  ‘I said, “Look, Mam, I want us to live in a house with central heating. We’ve only got one fire in this house.”

  ‘“Well, Jaysus, I’m with you, Brendan.”

  ‘So we put the house up for sale and got twenty-one thousand pounds for it, putting the whole lot into the new house, at Ninety-Two Deer Park, with underfloor heating, the lot. And a very low mortgage.’

  The mammy and son – and his new wife – in the same house? Well, it didn’t, as you would expect, run entirely smoothly.

  ‘My mam did her own thing but there were times when she and Doreen were at loggerheads.

  ‘In the early days it was tough because I would come home and me mam would say, “There’s your dinner.” And then Doreen would come in from work later, cook, and ask me, “Why are you not eating your dinner?” So I used to eat both.’

  They all managed to coexist, the biggest downside being Brendan’s expanding girth.

  ‘And I got to talk to my mother more and more. We had great discussions.’

  Brendan and his mammy would still argue ferociously. ‘But not about anything trivial. It was always about something major.’

  The family triangle had moved up in the world, but the income had to support that. And Brendan, now 21, badly wanted a career beyond waiting tables.

  ‘One of the things I did shortly after I got married was to try and become a farmer. So I rented out some acreage in North County Dublin and began to grow things.

  ‘I knew from the hotel business that the most difficult part of being a chef was preparing the vegetables, so I bought myself a peeler and peeled the potatoes for the hotel. And I also did ready-prepared vegetables such as sprouts, chopped carrots and turnips, the sort of things you can buy in supermarkets now.

  ‘It was one of the nicest jobs I ever had, out in the field in the summer, delivering the produce to the hotels, and I loved watching everything grow, picking the celery or whatever at the right time.

  ‘But at the end of the year I did all the sums and broke even. Talk about naive. I didn’t realise that most businesses struggle to survive the first year and to break even was pretty good. I had the ideas, but not the wherewithal to make it all work.’

  He had to make it all work. Doreen announced she was pregnant. Brendan was thrilled at the idea of becoming a father. But now the pressure was on him to provide.

  His next venture was into the world of publishing.<
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  ‘I got a job selling advertising with a company called Soccer Reporter and they produced a football magazine. But we also had the contract with the Irish Football Association to sell advertising into their 15,000 programmes, which we’d make and give over for nothing, but we’d get all the advertising revenue.’

  Brendan loved the challenge.

  On 23 February 1979, Doreen gave birth to a son, whom the couple decided would be called Brendan. But the tiny little boy was born with hydrocephalus spina bifida.

  ‘The doctors said, “Your baby is in The Holy Angels’ Ward.” They had had to operate on him while he was still in the womb, to remove fluid from the brain. But every time they removed fluid, it would damage him. As a result, he was born blind. Then the next thing we discovered was that he was paralysed, and I remember kneeling and begging God to take him – for selfish reasons, because I didn’t think I could cope. I didn’t even want to see him because he had no longer become the baby I had pictured in my head. Then the doctors let me see him. I saw he was lying on his side with tape running down his back covering the spine, and his left foot was badly turned and his head swollen. God love him, he was a mess.

  ‘Then a voice behind me declared, “He’s a beautiful child, Brendan.” I said, “He doesn’t look so bad.” The doctor let me put my two hands into the incubator and hold Brendan, who had the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen. And he was beautiful. Just beautiful. I held his little hands and of course bravado kicked in. And I said, “Well, when can I have him home?” And the doctor said, “Mr O’Carroll, you’ll never have him home. Brendan could live for three days, three weeks, three months. But I hope for your sake it’s three days. And if he ends up an angel in God’s garden, he’s a lucky God.”’