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

by Beacom, Brian

  ‘I’ve always tried to love my neighbour, which is the one Christian law that counts. I don’t go to Mass at all but every time I hug my child, that’s a prayer. As for, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”? Great idea, but which God are we talking about? Jesus? Or, Jaysus? Most people who use the word “Jaysus” use it as a term of hope or a term of despair. If anybody who is in despair calls on Jesus, I think that’s good, regardless of the situation. And Jesus can do with all the advertising he can get. I’m happy to include Him in my act.’

  Brendan reckons Jesus, a man with a great sense of humour, would be a fan of Mrs Brown’s. ‘He’d piss Himself laughing. I betcha if I’d been around, He’d have booked me for the Last Supper.’

  Brendan certainly had his followers in Ireland in 1991.

  The mix of music and comedy was so successful that Gerry Browne sold his milk round and he and Brendan became full-time entertainers.

  Colin and Willie, both musical purists, left to be replaced by Gerry Simpson and Eric Sharp and seventeen-year-old Glen Power (now with The Script) on drums, but the success continued, with the act doing eight gigs a week.

  Audiences loved the format; the band would do forty minutes and Gerry performed some parody songs. Brendan would perform a further forty minutes of comedy, and then they’d all perform the final third of up-tempo songs.

  The band of brothers were having an incredible time on the road. And by this point Benny (as Gerry nicknamed his pal) and Gerry had made a pact: other band members could come and go, but they were the axis on which everything turned.

  ‘I then suggested building my own stage, with backdrop and lighting. I reckoned with this set-up we could do a gig anywhere. And to do all this would cost thirty thousand pounds.’

  But therein lay a problem. Brendan couldn’t raise thirty thousand smiles, even if he stood naked outside the President’s Palace with a shamrock clenched in his teeth. His name was still mud at the bank. However, he managed to find a finance company that was prepared to back him, so long as he managed to get receipts for everything. But he needed a guarantor. Gerry Browne stepped up to the plate.

  ‘“And I said to him, ‘If you do that, Gerry, you’ll be my partner.”’

  The one-time adversaries were now blood brothers. They wrote together, coming up with an album of parody songs, Yer A Sick Man, Da, which attracted major radio airplay. And now two other key personnel were added to the team.

  ‘When I started doing the Rathmines Inn, I used to carry the speakers down, unlock the van and put the speakers in, lock the van, go up and get the microphones, come back down, repeat the process, ten times or so every week. Until this night, this fella was standing there and offered to help me throw the stuff in the van.

  ‘This process repeated every week. Now, after a few times I said to him, “Look, I don’t have enough money to pay you,” and in fact, at first he was lending me the price of a pint.

  ‘Then, when we got the first bigger-paying gigs, I asked him to come along as a lumper.’

  Former window-cleaner Dermot O’Neill, aka Bugsy, and so nicknamed because of his resemblance to the wise-cracking cartoon rabbit, had been a fan of Tinker’s Fancy and now became Brendan’s first lieutenant. (Bugsy’s brother Tommy was married to Gerry’s aunt and played football with Gerry.) Since that time, Brendan and Bugsy have been inseparable, with Bugsy going on to play Grandad in the Mrs Brown stage and television adventures and being the butt of many of Agnes Brown’s gags. ‘We give Grandad Viagra,’ says Agnes to Winnie. ‘It stops him pissing on his socks.’

  Brendan then hired another stalwart in Pat Shields, aka Pepsi, who would also become an actor, playing both Rory and Mark Brown.

  ‘Pepsi was a sound man and working for another entertainer, Paul Malone, at the time, and I asked this guy for a loan of his sound gear when we were doing a trip to the London clubs. He said he would loan me the equipment and the van, because he was taking a two-week holiday, if I used his sound man, and of course paid his wages.

  ‘And the sound man was Pepsi. About a year later, when things got busier, I offered Pepsi a job, and he jumped at it.’

  ‘Pepsi had never directed or recorded anything before. But that didn’t matter.’

  The success meant constant night work. Doreen, with two kids to look after, would look in when she could, but Brendan was now beginning to occupy a different world. He was now creating a business, a little travelling troupe of blokes he could depend upon and have fun with. And he was starting to make money, which helped salve his conscience about being away from home.

  ‘Doreen came to realise I wasn’t a waiter any more.’

  He was a full-time comedian. And it meant he had to come up with a tremendous amount of material. He wasn’t writing scripts as such, but he’d get an idea for a gag and write the prompter on the back of a beer mat, say an idea about airplane toilet sex or whatever.

  As time passed, the writing improved, and greater success was just around the corner. But even the best clairvoyant couldn’t have seen it coming.

  Radio Days

  THE BRENDAN and Gerry success story continued to the point they reckoned they’d have to make a background history up, to make themselves more interesting.

  Newspapers and magazines were coming at them, asking for feature interviews, wondering how this fun act came together and what was the connection between the pair?

  Obviously, Brendan couldn’t tell the truth, that he had reckoned the Brownes were best avoided, so they massaged the truth a little. (In the same way that the word ‘massage’ is used by the backstreet saunas offering extras.)

  ‘We needed some really good publicity material,’ Brendan recalls, grinning. ‘And the idea we sold to the media was that we had grown up together in Finglas (true), hung around the street corners together (false), that Gerry had an old guitar with nylon strings he’d strum, and we’d sing funny songs together and everybody thought we were hilarious (false).’

  To add to the colour, the story they told was that Gerry was always looking out for his little pal, Brendan, and so they’d always had their Mice and Men relationship (false).

  A relationship based on a lie perhaps isn’t the most solid basis upon which to build. But what the hell? The pair got on like a whole housing estate on fire. This was a partnership that worked.

  The act was now so successful that the pair recruited the services of showbiz agent Pat Egan, the man who’d set up gigs for Billy Connolly in Ireland, to line up the bookings.

  In truth, Pat Egan regarded Brendan as the money shot, the one with the most commercial appeal, but Brendan maintained there were two main men in the show.

  That’s not to say Brendan sang his partner’s praises continually from every mountain high.

  ‘Gerry was a bit of an optimist. At one point he said to me, with a real positive note in his voice, “We’re doing great, Brendan. We’ve got twenty-two grand in the bank.”

  ‘“No, Gerry. We’ve got a thirty grand overdraft and we’ve only used eight grand of it. We’re actually eight grand overdrawn.” But that’s the way he looked at life.’

  Still, they were moving forward. Thankfully, the comedy show grew in strength, and Bugsy was now taking the money in at the door and helping with stage equipment. (Bugsy is a gentle easy-going bloke. But when punters tried to get in free he showed his toughness; no one got in without paying.)

  Brendan and Gerry were fast becoming local celebrities and, splitting the profits fifty–fifty, were on their way to making a decent living.

  It wasn’t a subtle act, but it worked. Brendan reckoned what it needed, however, was a little more publicity; someone to work the newspapers, to generate interest in the travelling showmen.

  That’s where Rory Cowan came in. Rory had worked in PR with EMI Records, looking after the likes of Diana Ross and the Pet Shop Boys, but he had left his job, fallen out with his partner and generally fallen on hard times. He was trying to get back on his feet workin
g as a promoter when he approached Brendan to do a gig in a Dublin venue. Brendan agreed, but unfortunately the show took place in the middle of a glorious Dublin summer, and the gig failed miserably.

  Brendan didn’t lose out because he was on a guarantee of £500 for the gig, but they took only £550 at the door. Despite that, Rory still offered Brendan his £500 – which Brendan refused. He said, ‘Look, we’ll pay the fifty quid for the hall, we’ll both take two hundred each and give a hundred pounds to charity.’

  A delighted Rory agreed. And Brendan was so impressed by Rory he offered him a job as a publicist. It was a bold idea – pub acts didn’t normally hire PR men – but Brendan and Gerry were determined to go to the next level, to play the big hotels.

  However, Brendan was also inviting Rory into the ‘family’, the separate showbiz world he’d created and was having so much fun in. To include Rory in this world meant Brendan believed his new chum to be a bit special.

  ‘Tell me something, Rory. How bad are things?’

  ‘Well, the house is about to be repossessed, and I’m three months behind with the electricity.’

  ‘Now, tell me, Rory. Are you gay?’

  ‘Which answer gets me the job?’

  ‘The truth.’

  ‘Well, I am gay, as it happens.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  And Rory was now on the payroll. But Brendan first suggested they do another gig, this time in Finglas; as a local, he knew it would be a sell-out.

  It turned out to be a great confidence booster for Rory, and Brendan knew his new friend would walk away with a couple of grand. They took £4,500 on the night. Then Brendan issued his terms of contract to Rory.

  ‘I said, “Look, here’s what I want to offer you. I’ll pay you five hundred a week, but I’m going to take two hundred and fifty quid a week to pay your bills. I’ll speak to the finance companies and I’ll sort it.”’

  He did. And Rory has worked with Brendan since, graduating to play the role of Rory Brown, Agnes’s gay son.

  Why did Brendan ask if Rory were gay? He’s certainly not homophobic, and it’s not the sort of question asked in job interviews these days. Was it tied to his disappointment over The Abbot’s Castle?

  ‘It was about honesty. I wanted to deal with someone who was direct, and I really liked the bloke.’

  Brendan, Gerry and Rory pushed the envelope in terms of trying to become a brand name in Ireland. They managed appearances in a couple of small TV shows, but nothing major. What they wanted was a slot on Ireland’s most successful entertainment show, The Late, Late Show, fronted by silver-haired, silver-tongued presenter Gay Byrne. And they made it, performing a version of a parody song, ‘Hey, Paddy’, about how the Irish were treated in England.

  But the impact was minimal. What the team needed, desperately wanted, was for Brendan to appear on the show as a solo comedian. (While Gay Byrne loved to give newcomers a chance, his production staff deemed the often outrageous O’Carroll too much of a risk.)

  How to achieve it? What Brendan and Gerry did was hang around the RTÉ studio canteen, just to be seen. And both being highly colourful dressers (Brendan, though balding, had braided, beaded hair extensions), they were certainly noticed.

  They’d go along on a Friday afternoon, pretending to be working on imaginary scripts, hoping to make contacts, to be seen as a couple of important players.

  The ploy worked to a degree. They managed to land a spot on one TV show, The Beat Show (sponsored by Pepsi, and where Brendan arrived wearing a 7Up T-shirt, which created a little rumpus), and they were moving in the right direction.

  Back at home, Doreen was supportive of Brendan’s bid for fame, but the relationship, he says, wasn’t going well. Brendan was spending so much time on the road; he certainly wasn’t the husband Doreen had married. But, in November 1991, the marriage was truly tested. Doreen announced she was pregnant again.

  ‘This was nine years after Danny was born and I was taken aback, largely because at this time things weren’t good between us.

  ‘But I came round to the idea. Then, very quickly, within two weeks, her breast swelled. One day, Gerry Browne came in and gave her a hug, “Howareye, Doreen”, and she screamed with the pain of it. The doctors took her in for examination and cancer was revealed.

  ‘Doreen had a lump, which within two weeks had gone from the size of my knuckle to the size of my fist.

  ‘But it turned out that being pregnant saved her life. The oestrogen was feeding the cancer, which was growing rapidly. And if she hadn’t been pregnant with Eric, the cancer would have grown, probably unnoticed.

  ‘So the doctors decided to do a full mastectomy, while Doreen was pregnant. But they assured her not to worry about the baby because it would spontaneously abort.’

  Brendan battled hard to keep Doreen’s spirits up. But it was tough. When he arrived home that night, there was a man sitting outside in a car. Moments after Brendan had gone into the house, he rang Brendan’s doorbell.

  ‘I’m from Dublin County Council, and I’m hereby fining you for putting your posters up on lampposts around Mulhuddart.’

  ‘Listen, mister. I’ve just been told my wife has cancer. Come back again, will you?’

  ‘God love the man. The blood drained from his face. It was an awful thing to say to him, but I was just knackered. I never heard from him again.’

  Brendan carried Doreen through the chemo ordeal. He and Gerry would turn up outside the ward window at Dublin’s Mater Hospital with guitars and sing to her.

  The cancer was a nightmare for Doreen, but it also took its toll on him.

  ‘Before going on stage at night I’d cry. People would say to me, “How can you go on stage and be funny for two hours every night?” But the truth was that for those two hours I didn’t have a wife who was suffering from cancer. I didn’t have a child who was certain to die. This was my world that I had created, a world in which no one could touch me.

  ‘And I have to say while I was on stage, nothing would faze me. If anything, the tragedy at home concentrated my mind and so I had to think hard about being funny. I was desperate to be funny, to forget about everything else. And it worked. And it also made me realise the importance of comedy, for the person who delivers it and for those who receive it.’

  But he couldn’t hold it together at all times.

  ‘On the way back from a gig in the country, I’d pull off the road and cry. I’d sit for hours and sob.’

  Doreen went through the mastectomy and the chemotherapy. Incredibly, the baby didn’t spontaneously abort.

  ‘We did think of aborting the baby. From the beginning, the one thing I knew I wanted was Doreen. We didn’t care if they’d to take a breast, an eye, nose, leg, whatever they liked, as long as they got the cancer.

  ‘The doctors were reassuring, however. They were great. They said they could treat the cancer without harming the baby, although on Christmas Eve she lost all her waters. Yet, she begged me not to let the doctors do an internal examination because that would almost certainly lead to an infection.

  ‘“It’s over then, Brendan.”

  ‘“Okay, Doreen. I won’t let them.”

  ‘And at six o’clock the next morning, the pain had ceased. And she clutched her hands between her legs for five months to hang onto this baby. Now I, as a man, don’t have that kind of courage. Women have real strength. We’re wimps when it comes to something like this.

  ‘But the miracle was that the baby didn’t abort. He was born at twenty-eight weeks, at two pounds two ounces on 6 May 1992. And he was called Eric.’

  Brendan had persuaded Doreen to leave the flap of skin tucked up under the scar, where the breast tissue was removed, in case she could later have breast reconstruction. Doreen initially said no.

  ‘She wasn’t thinking straight at the time. But she eventually agreed, and it turned out for the best. She went on to have a full reconstruction.’

  Doreen was given the all-clear by a Harley Street sp
ecialist. The cancer hadn’t spread. And it was reckoned the type of cancer that could have been stress-induced (perhaps the strain of debt?) and not genetic.

  ‘This suggested that Fiona didn’t have that cross to bear. I was so thankful to hear that.’

  The cancer trauma brought the couple closer for the time being. However, Brendan’s developing celebrity status brought its own problems for his family.

  ‘Eric’s birth made the papers, who described him as “a special kid”. One day, Fiona came from school and said one little girl said her dad had told her Eric was “a special kid” because she and Danny had been adopted. She was distraught. I drove her in the car to the register office in Lombard Street and filled out a form to get her birth certificate. Fiona took my word for it she wasn’t adopted, but all it takes is a seed from a comment like that to set someone on the wrong track.’

  Brendan’s career was shortly to shift track, changing his entire future, thanks to an appearance one sunny July afternoon in 1992 at the Dublin radio station, 2FM.

  Rory Cowan had been working on building up Brendan’s profile, saying at the time, ‘You couldn’t have given him away free with a packet of Daz outside of Dublin.’

  Rory had spoken to radio presenter Gareth O’Callaghan and Gareth agreed to have Brendan and Gerry on the show ‘to do some funny bits from the papers.’

  Yet, the stand-up comedian had no idea of what the casual chat with Gareth, the Irish version of BBC Radio 2’s Steve Wright, was about to produce.

  ‘Gareth was a really good presenter. Anyway, after I did the interview on the show, I had a coffee with him, along with Rory and Gerry, and Gareth said he was looking for something to give the show a lift.’

  ‘“Look, Brendan, you’re a funny guy. Now, we’ve got this idea for the show where we run a little mini-soap. Just two minutes long, every day. Would you have any ideas for a character?”’