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

by Beacom, Brian

  Brendan looked at the DJ and smiled. Of course he had no ideas. He was a stand-up comedian. He played pubs around Dublin, telling gags as part of a show band with his partner Gerry Browne. He wasn’t a writer.

  But those weren’t the words that came out of the astonishingly confident – and opportunistic – O’Carroll mouth.

  ‘Yes, I do have a couple of ideas I’ve been working on, as it happens,’ said Brendan, brightly.

  ‘Oh really? What are they?’

  ‘Yes, what are they?’ asked a bewildered Rory, smiling.

  ‘Well, Gareth, my central character is a Dublin housewife.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And . . .’

  Brendan’s brain raced up the gears. A bead of sweat formed on his head. He could sense this was a real opportunity.

  ‘And she’s got seven kids,’ Brendan added, with a rush of breath. ‘She’s a recent widow, and she’s struggling to bring up the kids on her own.’

  ‘I like it,’ said Gareth. ‘Is there more?’

  ‘It’s about how she looks after her incredibly colourful family. She’s a typical Dublin mammy.’

  ‘Love the idea, Brendan. Maybe we could do something with that. So what’s her name?’

  Brendan threw a quick glance in the direction of his show-band partner whose mother he’d seen that very morning.

  ‘Agnes Browne,’ he said, smiling. (Brendan would use the name Agnes Browne in books and plays until 1999. Thereafter the ‘e’ would be dropped.)

  ‘Nice. How soon can you come up with a script for us?’

  ‘Sure, I’ve got some ideas at home,’ said the comedian, almost believing his own line.

  ‘Great, get them in, and if they work out we’ll start the series next week.’

  Brendan went home that night and told Doreen what had happened. She couldn’t believe her husband had had the balls to fib to the radio guys. She worried too about how he would come up with a script. Brendan was dyslexic, after all. He’d never written anything longer than a shopping list or a poem. How could he dream up a radio series?

  But Brendan didn’t worry. He sat down with a jotter and a pen and the words came fast and furious. The dialogue was already in his mind. He knew Agnes. He knew her sons and her daughter. He immediately knew the situations they’d find themselves in.

  How did he know Agnes so intimately? When the radio presenter asked for ideas, Brendan knew he needed to create a character who was larger than life, but entirely believable. So he thought of the women who’d made most impact on him. He thought of his mother, the indomitable Maureen O’Carroll, the former nun, who’d renounced her vows in order to marry, and produced a family of eleven, who’d had to cope alone when her husband had died. He thought of Moore Street, of Dublin’s street market and the tough, battle-worn women who worked all day in the worst of weather and always showed the best of spirits. He thought of the mammys of Doreen and Gerry Browne.

  What Brendan didn’t appreciate at the time was that Agnes had been locked away in his head for years, just waiting for the day she would be let loose. She was his very own Old Mother Riley. She was universal, the Jewish mama, the black mammy, the tough creature who’d kill to protect her kids.

  But the chat at the radio station revealed the essence of Brendan O’Carroll: a man who could turn an opportunistic moment into a career move.

  In later years, on stage and television as Mrs Brown, he’d reveal his talent as an ad-libber, how he could react to a situation and throw in a great, unscripted line. But back in 1992, he wasn’t self-aware enough to realise his own talent for thinking on his feet.

  Could he write a script? Brendan used some of the stories he’d told at live gigs and he developed other characters.

  He came up with a policeman called Fluffy, to be played by Gareth, the presenter. Betty would be played by a lady called Siobhan Scott who worked in the RTÉ newsroom, Gerry Browne was to be Dino, Mark and Buster Brady, Buster being based on a real-life scamp from Finglas called Radar. Rory would play Rory, the gay son (that in itself was a bold move considering homosexuality in Ireland was still illegal).

  But none of this mattered. When Gareth O’Callaghan gave the finished scripts to his producer Ian Wilson, the producer read the dialogue and decided it was ‘too urban’. What he was really saying was they were unbroadcastable. He believed they might be popular in working-class Finglas, but not across Ireland.

  Mrs Browne’s Boys were never going to be invited to play in the broadcast world of RTÉ’s 2FM.

  Brendan was gutted. But he hadn’t given up on the idea. The following week, Brendan and Gerry were back on the show doing their ‘bits’ and they appealed to the producer. Still ‘no’. A little later, however, the lucky leprechaun appeared by Brendan’s side. Ian Wilson went on holiday and Gareth O’Callaghan was hit by a wave of sheer boldness. He took a huge personal risk and decided to broadcast Mrs Browne’s Boys in his boss’s absence. Would it work?

  Meanwhile, Brendan and Gerry faced another problem when it came to recording in Start Studios. The actress hired to play Agnes, Maggie Mallon, hadn’t turned up. She’d reveal later she was sick, but that was no comfort to studio bosses. The show had to go on, or be pulled from the schedule.

  ‘We’ll have to cancel,’ said Gareth O’Callaghan to a disconsolate Brendan.

  ‘Like hell we will!’

  ‘But how can we go on without an Agnes?’

  ‘Give me a minute. Let me think.’

  Brendan’s mind turned over. He remembered those who’d told him he could never run his own nightclub, aged thirteen. He remembered those who said he’d never amount to anything, yet he became the best waiter in Dublin. He recalled those who said he was stupid because he couldn’t read properly, yet he’d built up a half-million-pound pub business, only to have it stolen from him.

  And he could laugh at those who said he’d never make it as a stand-up.

  ‘There’s an easy solution, Gareth. I’ll play Agnes.’

  And he did. It was Irish luck mixed with a streak of nerve. Brendan stretched his voice upwards a little and recorded that first episode with the idea he’d then go back to using the original actress.

  But, Brendan reveals, ‘the guy who was doing the edit listened to that first recording and said, “This woman is good, who is she?”

  ‘“That’s me.”

  ‘“Feck off!”’

  ‘“No, it is.”’

  And Brendan never used an actress to dub over his lines. He had his Mrs Browne. And he would save the cost of a wage into the bargain. A negative had been turned into a positive. A disaster had been turned into an opportunity. And it was emblematic of the way Brendan would live his life.

  He also featured those who were part of his second family.

  But would these working-class characters be popular across Ireland? Within minutes of transmission, the waiter and the milkman had their answer. The 2FM switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree. It was jammed with requests for repeats.

  The show became so popular that the inmates at Wheatfield Prison requested they lose an hour of their recreation so they could remain in their cells and listen to the broadcast. Taxi drivers would stop at the taxi ranks at 4.25 and wouldn’t take fares until the five-minute episode was over. Brendan and Gerry had gone from singing rude songs in bars to becoming national institutions.

  They weren’t making money from the radio show because they had to pay for studio time, but at the end of every show, the presenter would plug the upcoming gigs.

  However, the demands of writing a daily show almost brought Brendan to tears.

  ‘When you write something to go out five days a week, it’s really tough. You spend every moment going around with a pen in your hand. I would go into the recording studio every Saturday to record the shows for the following week, record the dialogue, and put the sound effects on for each of the episodes, which lasted from five to seven minutes.

  ‘But there were times when I’d be sitt
ing there on a Friday night, knowing the studio was booked, the actors were coming in, and I was staring at blank pages. I’d make a cup of coffee and sit there, desperate. Every episode had to have a conclusion on a Monday, from a story that started the previous week, going on to Wednesday and the start of a new storyline.

  ‘And I knew I couldn’t go to bed until I had those five episodes. End of story. But by five a.m., I’d have it. Invariably, we’d go in the next day to record this rather ordinary script and people would say, “This is your best yet!”’

  Somehow, from somewhere, Brendan would come up with the goods.

  ‘I was learning it was all about work. This was a real craft.’

  But what to do next? Mrs Browne’s Boys was successful, and now most of Ireland had heard Brendan’s name. But no one knew what Mrs Browne looked like. She was a disembodied voice on the radio.

  What could Brendan do to make sure he became a household face?

  The Mammy Book

  ONE Friday night in February, 1993, Brendan O’Carroll’s life was about to change beyond recognition. And it all came about by incredible coincidence. While Brendan, Gerry and Rory had doggedly pursued a solo slot on The Late, Late Show, it turned out that Gay Byrne’s production team actually came looking for Brendan. Why? Newspaper stories had emerged about Doreen almost losing the baby, while Brendan was out working the pubs and hotels, trying to make strangers smile.

  Here was the hilarious Mrs Browne from the radio – who’d had to endure personal hell. The researchers asked Brendan to appear and give the world the chance to see the face behind the radio mammy. But they also wanted Ireland to see the comedian who’d battled personal trauma with the dramatic birth of Eric.

  And they asked for Doreen to be in the audience and talk about Brendan.

  ‘I was booked for a nine-minute interview on the strength of the radio show and people knew the Mrs Browne series, but not me. But I had never met Gay; I didn’t know how far I could go. But I told story after story and ten minutes later he was almost on the floor laughing. I kept going and it turned out to be the longest interview with a comedian The Late, Late Show had ever done. And at the end of the thirty-five minutes he was wiping the tears from his eyes.’

  The chat with Doreen also worked incredibly well. She was nervous, but came across as sincere, and supportive of her husband.

  And what happened next was the stuff of movie scripts.

  ‘The next day everybody in the country knew my name - it was an amazing transformation.

  ‘The night before we had gigged in McGowan’s bar for £350 and four days later I did a hotel in Mullingar for £3,500.’

  Brendan would go on to appear on the nation’s favourite TV show a total of 24 times between 1993 and Byrne’s retirement in 1999. And he’d continually praise the man who ‘gave him a leg up’. Gay Byrne, in turn, would describe Brendan as ‘One of the funniest men I’ve ever met.’

  By now The Outrageous Comedy Show was gone. The act was now The Brendan O’Carroll Show.

  ‘We were now gigging around the country, getting a thousand people at the door, paying a tenner a ticket.’

  The next step on the road to success was to move up from the pub and hotel world. How? Easy. Just hire one of Dublin’s major theatres for a week, and fill the 370 seats every night. So what if it cost £4,500 a week to rent the Tivoli Theatre in Francis Street for a week.

  But would the rising comedy star, now sporting a ponytail, be able to fill a theatre? Brendan’s popularity had grown with the radio show. The ‘family’ moved into the Tivoli and sold out week after week. The shows were so popular that one was recorded and the How’s Your Wobbly Bits? video outsold U2 in the charts.

  At long last, Brendan began to pay off his pub debt and he and Doreen and the three kids moved to a larger semi-detached house in Ashbourne, County Meath.

  Yet, Brendan had misgivings about the big-league success that had come his way. He maintains his wife wasn’t prepared to leap aboard this new, faster train.

  ‘Suddenly, I had more gigs than I could handle. At the end of one stint I went home with the earnings in a bag. I had £25 grand in cash and I put it on the table in front of Doreen.

  ‘Doreen looked at the money on the table and with a look of horror said “Sure, I’m not taking any of that!”

  ‘“What? You’re kidding me!”’

  She didn’t think he’d stolen it. Worse than that. She thought he was a phoney.

  ‘She said “I’m telling you now, they’re going to find out you’re only a waiter - and everybody’s going to want their money back. And I’m not having any part of it.”

  ‘And Doreen’s perspective never changed. I was always the waiter. I had to say to her “You married the waiter. He doesn’t exist any more.’”

  Brendan certainly wasn’t being treated like a big star at home.

  ‘I remember the opening night of my one-man show at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin and Doreen couldn’t make it because she was taking her mother to the bingo.

  ‘I’d come in having sold out a show, as I did once on a trip to London, at the Lyric Theatre in London’s West End, and I’d get “Oh, that’s nice”.’

  After The Late, Late Show, Brendan was the best-known comedian in Ireland. But he reckoned it was time to end his radio show. After all, he didn’t need the publicity any longer and radio paid very little. So he decided to kill off Agnes, the woman with a mouth like a drain and the laugh of a machine gun without a safety catch.

  Brendan ended the second series with Agnes ill in hospital, surrounded by her children, with the last line of the show being a doctor proclaiming, ‘I’m sorry. I have to turn the machine off.’

  What happened next? The fans were furious and the radio station was bombarded with complaints. ‘How can you kill off Agnes Browne?’ It was like the outrage that greeted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when he tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls.

  ‘I had no idea we’d get that reaction. I presumed it was a Dublin story for a Dublin audience. I had no idea that nationwide it was going bananas. It was only when travelling around the country doing the bigger gigs that I truly realised. So I agreed to do another series and I opened the new one with the doctor repeating his line about switching off the machine and then Agnes coming in with, “Excuse me, they’re my children. If they want coffee they can have as much as they like, but don’t turn off the coffee machine!”’

  Mrs Browne’s Boys would gently fade out in 1994, but Brendan was now a star, voted Ireland’s Number One entertainer at the National Comedy Awards. (Gerry Browne was now happy to take second billing to his friend, although he was still a joint partner, on a fifty–fifty split of all earnings.)

  The pair continued to appear at the Tivoli, still very much the talk of the town, and one night the talk reached the ears of Hollywood star Gabriel Byrne, of The Usual Suspects and more recently TV drama In Treatment fame. The actor came to see the show and loved it.

  ‘Someone told me he was in the audience with his (actress) wife Ellen Barkin, and I was asked if he could come back and say hello. Of course, I was delighted. So we had a chat and then Gabe asked me to come back for a coffee to the Westbury Hotel, and he got talking about my performance. He happened to say to me, “You have a very unique way of telling a story. You should think about writing a screenplay.” And I said, laughing, “Oh I will, Gabe.”

  ‘“No, seriously, you should, Brendan.”

  ‘“Oh, honest to God, I will.”

  ‘And I kept the smile of tacit agreement on my face for a while before I eventually managed to work up the courage to say, “Gabriel, I have to ask you. What the hell is a screenplay?”

  ‘“A screenplay, well it’s a movie story.”

  ‘“What do you mean? Is it a script? Is it a narrative?”

  ‘And he explained it was a sort of combination between a theatre script and a narrative. To highlight what he meant, he went up to his room and brought me down a couple of s
creenplays that he was in the process of turning down.

  ‘He then asked me to have a look at them, to see how a film script was set out. And at the same time he suggested I read a couple of books by a film teacher called Syd Field, The Scriptwriter and Making a First Script Great.

  ‘What happened in fact was Gabriel sent me these books. And Syd Field had a really great way of thinking, which inspired me.’

  Hopeful writers are always told, ‘Write what you know about’, and Brendan followed the maxim. He had boxed a bit during his youth and he came up with a story called Sparrow’s Trap. It was the tale of a young boxer who has the world – and his opponent – at his feet, until something stops him dead in his tracks.

  Brendan loved writing the script, but of course he wasn’t a film writer. It was just a bit of fun, an exercise in writing, and Sparrow’s Trap was consigned to a bottom drawer.

  Meantime, in the summer of 1994, Brendan was asked by RTÉ to go to America to the World Cup Finals where the Irish national team were taking part. He took friends such as Gerry Browne with him, and son Danny.

  ‘I was to go out to Orlando to stay with the team, to do a three-minute piece to camera every second day, interviewing the players, that sort of thing. I was the light relief in the serious business of football.

  ‘Now, to be honest, even though I was there with Gerry, I was bored out of my skull. Can you imagine me only working for three minutes every two days?’

  Not even the trauma involved in having his ponytail removed by Leeds United and Ireland footballer Gary Kelly could create enough excitement in his world. (The ponytail was subsequently auctioned for charity and sold for $15,000.)

  ‘To pass the time I read more of Syd Field’s book. And one of the exercises that Syd had come up with was to encourage you to write a twenty-page synopsis on your central character. Then you have a back story, and you know how your character will react to any given event.

  ‘Syd pointed out that drama is all about getting someone from A to B and putting obstacles in his way. But with a back story, you know how he’ll cope with each obstacle. So I thought, “What a great idea.” I went to the shopping mall across the road, got some paper and pens, and decided to do a back story for Mrs Browne. Of course, she had been popular on radio, but I reckoned we didn’t know anything about her really. So I decided to do twenty pages on Mrs Browne, just to pass the time.