While Brendan rated Maggie’s manner and professionalism, not all of the heads of state merited the same praise.
‘The King and Queen of Denmark were grand, but I remember Robert Mugabe (the Zimbabwean President) was something scary. He walked in surrounded by his ministers and cohorts and you never saw a group of people that looked more like a gang of thugs. They wouldn’t be out of place as bouncers in the worst nightclub in Glasgow.’
Brendan never sought to climb the catering ladder, despite his diplomatic skills and popularity. ‘All I was thinking was, “I’m going to get up today and make someone’s day.”’
Did he really love waiting on tables? He didn’t want to be where he was, hence the constant movement. He was looking for options. Continually. He’d already confessed his desire to become a comedian to Hal Roach. And he had worked with Brendan Grace to the same end. Deep down he wanted to become an entertainer. But he couldn’t entertain that thought. Waiters can’t just suddenly become performers.
What he seemed to be doing was living life day by day.
‘I’m not sure,’ he says, smiling. ‘I suppose I might have thought I’d like to own my own restaurant someday. But you just didn’t look beyond what you knew. I certainly didn’t have a grand plan.
‘And if there was ever a Plan A, when I was at school or whatever, it never happened. I’m on Plan J or somewhere, way down the alphabet.’
He might not have had a grand plan, but he admits he’s never been content.
‘Should life always be about chasing the dream? I knew a guy who was a roofer, and in the morning he went off and fixed his roofs, got home, had a bath, watched TV and went to bed. This routine would continue, except for weekends when he’d have a couple of drinks. And he was perfectly happy with that. He knew his life routine. And I used to look at him and wish it were me. Just so I could relax.’
Brendan will never relax. He needs to be moving forward, trying out new schemes, new strategies. He was always driven.
‘You feel out of sync with the world until you realise it’s just the way you are. You need that new challenge.’
And it would appear. A Herculean one at that.
Between Beirut and Baghdad
BRENDAN, despite his reservations about being promoted, had spread his wings a little and in 1986 was working as a restaurant manager in the Ashbourne House Hotel, close to his home.
‘We had a bar manager there, Kevin Moore, and Kevin was brilliant,’ he recalls one night in Derry, many years later, after a Mrs Brown show.
‘He was great with people, really likeable. Great at keeping things together. Then, one day, one of the customers in the hotel, a bloke called Grimes who ran an auctioneer’s business and knew me from Finglas, came over to me and said, “Look, you’re probably the best waiter I know. And everyone from Finglas says good things about you. So I’ve an offer for you. Have you ever heard of the Finglas Castle?”
‘I knew it was a new business, a lounge bar/club built in the shape of a castle, right on the border between Ballymun and Finglas.’
Brendan adds, grinning, ‘Now, that was like having a pub between Beirut and Baghdad. It was in a war zone. These two places did not see eye to eye.
‘So Grimes and his partner had built the pub – but they couldn’t run it, with the gangs around and all. It was an almost impossible task. And it was taking its toll on them, physically and financially.
‘This developer said to me, “Look, we want you to take it over.” I said I had no money, but he was adamant that there had to be some way to make it work. So I designed a deal whereby we would agree a price for the pub, which would be about three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Kevin and I would rent it off them for three years, at a rent of four thousand a month. And we got the first three months rent free.
‘And at the end of the three years we’d buy it, but with a reduction of twenty-five per cent of all the rent we’d given them.
‘So we shook hands on the deal. It made sense for everybody. This made the deal self-financing. We could get credit from the brewers, the food suppliers, and we knew we could do well.’
The sums added up, but what Brendan also had going for him, besides the ability to construct a deal, were two things: his popularity in the community and the fact he wasn’t afraid of a little friction. He’d boxed as a teenager. He could handle himself. And he knew how to handle the bad boys.
It all looked fantastic. Brendan, a local boy, who had built up a great reputation in the catering industry, was someone the brewers could trust to run a tight ship, and he and Kevin knew what they were doing.
The first thing Brendan did was change the name to something more neutral. The pub became The Abbot’s Castle.
‘Now the abbot is a priest and no one could take offence at a priest. We also opened a nightclub in the building called The Jolly Friar and, to make sure it worked, we stopped the bad boys coming in.’
‘Of course when the bad boys were denied admission there were threats of the “Do you know who I am? I’ll be back to shoot you!” kind to deal with.
‘There were loads,’ says Brendan, his voice reflecting the mild indifference he’d displayed at the time.
‘There was one really bad family, and I barred them. All of them. I was told the place would be burnt down and I’d be shot. I said, “Make sure you get me first time. Because you’ll only get one chance.”
‘I never heard from them again but, about eight months later, I was taking a booking from a nice family for a wedding. And a couple of days before the function I was called up and the bloke who’d booked the function declared that the bad family were his relations.
‘I said, “Oh, then I think we could have a problem.”
‘“I know, but we want to bring the three brothers along. And I can guarantee nothing will happen.”
‘“You don’t have to guarantee me anything. I know nothing will happen. But the easiest way we can both make sure of having a good night is to not have them here. And you don’t have a problem because you can tell them it’s not you, it’s me that won’t have them here.”
‘“Brendan, we really would like them at the do.”
‘“Okay. For one night only. But I’m telling you now. If they cause any trouble I won’t be going after them. I’ll be coming to find you.”
‘So he took responsibility. But that night of the wedding yer man who’d first approached me was watching me and I was watching him.
‘Later that night he came over and said, “Listen, that night you barred me. I was putting a gang together to come up and burn this place down. But, and this is a compliment to you, I couldn’t get anyone to join me. Everybody I asked didn’t want to know. They were either afraid of you or you had helped them out. Fair play to you.”
‘“Am I supposed to be complimented by that?”
‘“Listen, you’ve seen what we’re about tonight. We’ve behaved ourselves, we’re a family who likes to enjoy ourselves. Are you going to lift the ban, Brendan?”
‘“No. After tonight you’re gone.”
‘And he was. I never saw nor heard from him again.’
Brendan had created Switzerland, a neutral territory in which people could enjoy themselves. It was that simple. He worked for almost four years, putting in every hour possible, without taking a single holiday. And The Abbot’s Castle began to make money. The former waiter was well on his way to becoming a successful businessman.
He’d also found a new friend in the charismatic Gerry Browne, a tall, talented musician who would come to play a part in shaping Brendan’s future life and career. (In fact, the pair would become so close that Brendan would dedicate his first book, The Mammy, to his chum with the line, ‘A man I care about. And one who cares about me.’)
But the pair didn’t hit it off straight away. Brendan reckoned that Gerry Browne came from a family of ‘gobshites’ (Gerry had ten brothers, one or two of them rather vocal in their opinions). And they had grown up in opposite ends of F
inglas, the line between west and east separating the two tribes who were often going to war.
‘I wasn’t too sure about a couple of Gerry’s brothers,’ says Brendan with a wry smile. ‘Gerry was a musician, a talented fella who had formed his own show band, Tinker’s Fancy, and was part of the local music scene. But such was the feeling that existed between us, when Gerry first came to The Abbot’s Castle looking to play there, I told him no. I wanted nothing to do with him. Then one night, about three weeks later, I turned up to a party in a block in Ballymun where Gerry was playing guitar and entertaining people. And he was good. Very good. When Gerry took breaks I’d crack a few gags and win them over.’
The Finglas tribal war was being played out in a tower-block party.
‘I reckoned I had the audience,’ says Brendan, with a grin. ‘Anyway, later on I was in the kitchen making myself a coffee when Gerry walked in.
‘“Sure. I’ll have one of those, Brendan. Two sugars.”
‘“See that? Coffee. Spoon. Kettle? Make your own.”
‘“You don’t like me much, do you?”
‘“What gave you that idea?”
‘“Look, you don’t know me, to be making these judgements. Let me tell you about myself . . .”
‘And he did. And we got to talking for the longest time and I came to realise he wasn’t a bad sort of fella at all.’
Gerry wasn’t. And the friendship developed after Gerry and his band came to play at The Abbot’s Castle on Sunday mornings.
Brendan was still casting around for new directions, and appeared willing to take guidance from any source, however unlikely.
‘My sister Eilish lived in London at the time. And she was mad about spiritualism. And so was my former boss in Ashbourne, and she’d given me this phone number, saying to pass it on to Eilish as she’d found this spiritualist brilliant.
‘Now, I happened to be in London, with some time on my hands. I’d never been to a spiritualist in my life so I thought I’d give it a go. I rang the number, a woman answered, and I told her who I was and asked if she were available for a reading.
‘She said, “Would you believe it. I’ve just had two cancellations and I’m free now.”
‘I took a taxi to this lady’s place. She was called Joyce Rawlings. I told her I didn’t believe in this sort of thing, but she didn’t try to convince me, just said we’d have a go and see what happened. And I liked her.
‘So we went into the front room and the first thing that struck me was that there were two armchairs and a series of religious pictures. Now, this may be a sad indictment of my experience of the Catholic Church, but for some reason I’d never equated religion with spirituality.’
Sitting down in front of the pictures of St Francis and the Virgin Mary, Joyce asked if Brendan would mind if she said a prayer before beginning. And Brendan, who hadn’t prayed for years, decided to pray also. He decided to pray to Jesus that he should not be hoodwinked by this lady who seemed so nice. Brendan then asked if he could take notes. Joyce agreed.
‘Joyce said it might look a little awkward, but she would stare at me until she “visualised my aura”. And she explained to me about the different colours around the body and what they represented. Then she sat back and stood behind me, looking at me and waving her hands around. Finally she let out a yell and said, “Oh my God!”
‘I said, “What’s wrong?”
‘“Nothing. It’s just that you only have one colour in your aura.”
‘“Is that bad?”
‘“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.”
‘This seemed to me to be a pretty bad start, but Joyce said, “No, wait. There are spirits flying past you. And they’re so happy for you. They’re all dropping golden keys onto your lap. Now I don’t know what you have coming, but it’s huge and you so deserve it.”
‘Then she starts waving her arms around, fending off these spirits and I’m thinking, “Okay, great. But you haven’t told me anything specific here.”
‘Then she says, “This one spirit wants to know who’s the woman who bakes the brown bread?”
‘Now, I wasn’t going to tell the woman lies. But I wasn’t going to help her. If she were being specific I would have. So I told her that most of the women in my family bake brown bread. It’s an Irish tradition.
‘Then she said, “But there’s somebody who bakes a specific type, a soda bread, a ‘tea brack’?”
‘Now I’m thinking, “My mother.”
‘She said, “She’s in God’s garden now. And your father’s there too. Walking behind your mother, holding onto the back of her apron. Would that be in keeping?”
‘But I’m thinking, “This is all still so vague.” Then she said there was a spirit that had a message from a man for me to deliver.
‘I wouldn’t take the message – it all felt too odd to me, so we agreed that she would write down the message anyway. It was, “I love you, I’ve always loved you, blah, blah.”
‘We moved on. And then she said, “I’ve come across a child in the spirit world. And I think he’s yours. Can I bring him through?”
‘Well, I was starting to feel a bit strange at this point. But I agreed. Then she started to talk about this child.
‘“Oh God, almighty. He is the spit of you. Did you know that children grow in the spirit world?”
‘“No I didn’t.”
‘“Well, he has. And he said to tell you that he’ll be ten shortly.”
‘Now, I was riveted. Brendan would have been four days short of his tenth birthday on 23 February.
‘“Brendan, he said to tell you that you should have no regrets. No guilty consciences. He is meant to be exactly where he should be.”
‘“Jaysus.”
‘“But I’m getting more, Brendan. You’re here in London for something to do with music. I’m getting a recording studio. A band . . . Something to do with a cannon?”
‘This was amazing. The reason I was in London was indeed to promote a local band; I had a meeting scheduled with Bruce White at Creole Records. And the name of the song we were going to try and sell was “Jump The Gun”.
‘“That’s what you’re here for, Brendan. But that’s not what is going to happen. I can see a studio and a microphone. Oh, and you love that microphone.”
‘“That won’t be me in the studio. It’s the band.”
‘“No, Brendan. It’s you.”
‘“But I’m not in the entertainment world.”
‘“I don’t care what you say. That’s where your future lies.”
‘“Right.”
‘“And I want you to remember something. Glasgow. Glasgow is going to be so important. And it’s you in the studio.”
‘So I wrote all this down. I was actually frightened by this point. Not visibly, but she took me in the kitchen, made me a cup of tea and then called a cab.
‘I went back to the hotel. Still shaken. And I went over the six pages of notes. Was it waffle? I was worrying that some of this stuff would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
‘Anyway, the thing with the band didn’t work out. But I ended up taking Joyce back to Ireland to read fortunes. And did they come true?
‘During the stint, I watched as she made the hardest of men weep. But – and there was indeed a very large but, which I didn’t pick up on till some time later – a pattern began to emerge. I think she knew how to get the genie out of the bottle, but not to get it back in. Ninety per cent of the people who took sittings with her had the most amazingly good news. And then had the most horrible five years that followed. Some went into bankruptcy, suffered serious illness. It was a terrible time for so many.’
What did it all mean? Was Brendan headed for a showbiz career? Was he destined to suffer incredibly bad fortune?
Has he formed this theory retrospectively because of the horrendous events that were to follow in his own life, looking back at the world with black-tinted glasses?
Brendan never saw Joyce after that trip
. Nor has he since visited a spiritualist.
‘I don’t believe in them. I don’t,’ he says, not entirely convincingly. ‘But I admit she stunned me. I just don’t know how she could have told me what she did.’
In the meantime, he wouldn’t worry about predestination. He would follow his gut instinct. Wherever that would take him.
Pub Bombs
BACK in Dublin, The Abbot’s Castle was ticking over nicely (Brendan was now driving a purple Jaguar XJ6) and Doreen, a mother-of-two, found time to work the door (the logic – correct, as it happens – being that tough guys would accept rejection from a slight female before they’d back down to a man). And Brendan and Kevin were easily making the payment terms.
In September 1989, Brendan reckoned he was due a holiday. His Toronto-based sister Fiona was getting married and he could take off and relax and enjoy himself in the knowledge that all was well back in his Dublin bar.
Kevin had had his problems in the past, mostly substance-abuse-related, and had spent some time in rehab. But he reassured his partner he could leave the bar in safe hands.
‘Brendan, this is the biggest vote of confidence anyone could give me. I’ll do you proud.’
Brendan and Doreen had a great two weeks in Canada and, returning to Ireland refreshed and invigorated, he felt ready to take the business up to the next level.
But it didn’t happen. When Brendan walked into The Abbot’s Castle on 12 September, he was frozen to the spot. All the fixtures had been removed, the furniture, the lampshades, the stock. Everything.
‘Kevin was gone and he’d even sold the plates and light bulbs.’
There was worse to come. When Brendan had a look at the bank account, he saw it had been wiped out. Clean. Desperately, Brendan made phone calls, spoke to friends to try to figure out what had happened. No one knew where Kevin had disappeared to, but acquaintances revealed they’d bought the furniture, the bits and pieces. Legitimately, they said.
Brendan was furious. A few months later, when he heard Kevin had come home for Christmas, Brendan was so angry he drove his car to Kevin’s mother’s house and sat outside waiting for him.
The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll Page 9