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

by Beacom, Brian

  ‘Don’t hello me, you little bastard. I sent you over there with It’s A Wonderful Life and you sent me back some mother’s My Left Foot!’

  ‘Just a second, Anjelica. Jim? Can you hear me? Line Six. It’s for you.’

  ‘I got a taxi to the airport and flew back to Dublin. And I had a smile on my face for the length of the entire journey.

  ‘The script that had gone to Anjelica’s office after the all-night session was Draft Thirteen. The one that was finally shot was Draft Four. The one I wanted to film.’

  Not quite. When Brendan read over Draft Four he realised one glaring omission: himself. So he wrote in a cameo, where he plays Seamus, an ever-present town drunk, a nice bit of comic relief.

  ‘I thought, “I’ll be fecked if I’m making a movie that I’m not in.” I wanted to bring a few more laughs.’

  When filming commenced, there was a heavy atmosphere on set. Many of the crew had worked on Sparrow’s Trap and hadn’t been paid.

  ‘I was seen as the failure on the set. And here they were filming my next movie straight away.’

  Brendan borrowed from Tom Cruise during the filming. Not in an acting sense, but the wig, one of the hairpieces Cruise used in Mission Impossible. But while Brendan’s head was a little warmer, Anjelica Huston blew ‘hot and cold’ during the six weeks’ filming.

  ‘She was like the rest of us. She can laugh a lot. And she had the will to make the movie. But I felt the process had chipped away at her. Some days she wouldn’t come out of her trailer until I went to talk to her. I’d have to say to her, “Hi, Angel, here I am. I’ve got a coffee for you. Why don’t you come out? There’s a whole big world out there waiting for you. And there’s a big machine that’s depending upon you. We all need you.” And she would say, “Are you sure, Brendy?” “Yes, I’m sure.” “Well, I’ll come out, then.”’

  The director, it seems, was stressed to the eyeballs with the pressures of filming and acting.

  ‘You just don’t get time to think, really, or time to be alone,’ she said at the time. ‘The moment I’m on the set, I go into hair and make-up, because I’ve got to get ready for the scene. And everyone wants to know what’s going on. “What are you going to do for the next scene and do you want her to sing? And what should the child wear?” You literally do not have a second in which you are not preoccupied with some immediate problem, or having to plan, or having to figure out yesterday’s mistakes. And you have about five hours’ sleep a night and most of those hours are spent dreaming about it.’

  But the star didn’t quite grasp Irish culture in the Sixties and saw Dublin through Hollywood glasses. Brendan explains: ‘One look at the set and I could see the film was no longer about Moore Street. Anjelica had created a completely new market, a compromise between a west of Ireland horse fair and Petticoat Lane in London.

  ‘In one scene she has a ceilidh band playing outside a pub in Moore Street. If we’d seen a ceilidh band in Moore Street in 1967, we’d have set them on fire for the craic, just to see how quick they would play.’

  He would get his chance to make another Agnes Browne movie, given the success of his BBC sitcom. But for the moment, everything was a compromise.

  ‘Gerard Depardieu, for example, was set to play Pierre, Agnes’s baker friend. But he had a motorbike accident in Cannes two weeks before the shoot and broke his leg. So we had to get Arno Chevrier at the last minute. Arno was great, but he wasn’t Depardieu.’

  One big star, Tom Jones, did come good, however, belting out ‘She’s a Lady’. (Close to production time, Cliff Richards offered to do the movie, but by that time Tom was signed.) Ray Winstone was great as the local loan shark.

  Brendan can be more relaxed now about the fate of the film. ‘It’s still a nice little movie. But you have to accept the first thing to go when you make a movie is the book. The other problem was that we lost the first gag from the book, the Hillman Hunter gag from the Social Security office scene, which really told us what Agnes was all about. Now, you needed that gag. It tells us Agnes has a real contempt for authority, she’ll play with people, and doesn’t trust them to pay her out. Again, she’s Che Guevara in a dress.’

  Yet, Brendan learned from the film experience.

  ‘The movie wasn’t bad. It was a cute little movie. And people have said they enjoyed it. But I just know that it could have been so much better. From a writer’s point of view, I saw things happening in it that left me dismayed. I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to say. What I also learned from the film experience was the realisation I’d nearly given up at one point, and I had to watch that. My thinking had to be: “Don’t ever get into a situation whereby anyone can undermine your decision-making process. And don’t let them change your script.”’

  Those words would stick with him years later when BBC producers would try to tell him how to write his hit sitcom, Mrs Brown’s Boys.

  Meantime, Brendan was still insolvent. It would be two years before Agnes Browne was released, and in financial terms it would do little more than take up space on the DVD rental shelf.

  Any money that arrived from his share of the film company advance was swallowed up by Sparrow’s Trap debts.

  He had to come up with a new plan.

  The Last Wedding

  BRENDAN’S career was in meltdown and in the autumn of 1998 his personal life was now in crisis. Since the success (and financial failure) of The Course, his time had been spent on the road, in Hollywood, in bank managers’ offices, with his troupe of touring players or in television studios.

  And during this journey the distance between Brendan and Doreen became unbridgeable. They no longer lived in the same world. Brendan was living his life at a speed Doreen couldn’t possibly match.

  Was there one moment when he knew all was lost?

  ‘No, well, maybe the more I got into show business . . . But there was something else. Couples, as they get older, look back and say, “Remember when we lived in that one room in Tallaght and there was just the two of us and we had no money and robbed milk off somebody’s doorstep? Weren’t we so happy then?” When you start saying, “Where did that go?”, you know it’s a warning sign.

  ‘And that happened to Doreen and me. Couples are at their happiest and best working against adversity. When that’s gone, you take a long look at your own life. I did. I didn’t look at Doreen and say, “It’s her fault.” I looked at myself and said, “I’m not happy.” Basically, my marriage separation happened because I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t even explain why. Yet, for years, I was afraid to tell Doreen. I hid those feelings, wondering how you can love someone and feel hollow inside.’

  Brendan had pots of adversity in his life in the form of massive debt. But adversity has to be shared to keep a couple strong. Brendan wasn’t sharing his problems with Doreen. In fact, he wasn’t sharing much of anything.

  By this point, Jenny had become a major feature in Brendan’s life, appearing with him on stage and on film. And she was now his best friend and business confidante. He maintains they hadn’t become a couple during their working time together, but there’s no doubt they had a strong emotional attachment. It was Jenny he had called from LA when he was in the doldrums. And Jenny had backed Brendan not only with cash, but unstinting loyalty.

  ‘When you are an artist – and I am an artist – and you are out and about, your greatest wish is for everybody to know you. That’s what you are trying to achieve. But Doreen felt she was living in a goldfish bowl.

  ‘It wasn’t because of Jenny that we separated, it was because of the pressures of show business. Doreen would be at home lonely and I would be away lonely. The two of us just went in different directions. I felt as if I was standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and there was no one standing beside me to share the exquisite view.’

  But break-ups of 23-year-old marriages are seldom less than awful.

  ‘It wasn’t that I was saying, “I don’t want to be Doreen’s husband,” I was saying, “I can’t be a
nyone’s husband. So much to do, so little time.” But sitting down with someone you love and admire and saying, “I’m not happy here,” is bad enough, but trying to explain, “It’s not your fault,” is even worse.

  ‘Many wives, in this situation, would feel, “It must be my fault”, or say, “You’re lying. If not to me, then to yourself,” as Doreen did.

  ‘But what I was saying was, “I’m not happy with the whole thing. I’ve got to step away from it.” The rot was a basic unhappiness I hadn’t sorted out. And, remember, we were fourteen when we met. Maybe it wasn’t about love back then. Maybe we got married because I felt it was about keeping a promise.

  ‘Whatever, when the end came I felt guilty, especially about the manner in which we’d broken up. I’d rather I’d been more honest, told her what I was feeling. I was arrogant. I thought she’d fall apart and I should have gone earlier.

  ‘I knew I was taking the first step by leaving Doreen. Yet the loneliness at the start, in my apartment, was dreadful.’

  Brendan had bought an apartment in the city’s Temple Gate. As if being insolvent weren’t enough, he had to cope without his family life and seeing his three kids on a daily basis. And he admits he simply couldn’t cope.

  ‘This really was the most depressing time of my life. I sat in my living room for two days with my arms crossed. I couldn’t move. Eventually, the second night I got down on my knees, and I prayed, like I did when I was a child. I prayed to my mother. “Mam, I hope you can hear this, but if you can, I know that you can help me. Give me the answer to how I can get through this.”

  ‘And that night I went to sleep and I had the most incredible dream. I dreamt I was in my office, an office I didn’t even have at the time, and the phone rang. And the secretary buzzed and said, “That’s your mother on the phone, Brendan.”

  ‘And I said, “Sure, I’ve been expecting the call.” So I took the call and it was my mother. And I told her I needed help. And she said, “Sure, Brendan, if you have the strength to get down on your knees and pray, you can get back up again and get on with life. Now do it!” And I woke up the next morning and I did.’

  Brendan’s tone turns upbeat as he continues the story.

  ‘We have an old saying in Ireland: God doesn’t give you a cross to bear that you can’t carry. And really what we’re saying is, life is preparing you for every little thing. And rarely do you come across something that completely devastates you. You’ve had preparation for that somewhere along the line.’

  What to do, though? The comedy gigs paid the mortgage on the house in Ashbourne and the rental on the flat. But there was the company debt the size of Dublin Palace to consider.

  One September morning, a magic moment occurred in the form of a phone call from John Costigan, manager of one of Dublin’s most prestigious theatres, The Gaiety.

  ‘John had loved The Course, and he liked me. So he asked me to have a coffee with him in a café in Chapel Street.

  ‘He said, “Listen Brendan. I’ve got three weeks free in the Gaiety in February. And Denis (Desmond, the owner of the Gaiety and the most important man in Irish showbiz) says he wants you to scribble up something for that time.”’

  Scribble up? What that very loose language translated to was that Denis Desmond wanted Brendan to write, hopefully, a hit play that would fill the theatre. But Brendan couldn’t take on that sort of task. He was flattened. He didn’t have the confidence to write a postcard, never mind another hit play.

  ‘I said, “Jaysus, John. I don’t know. I really don’t know.”’

  To complicate matters, John said they would agree upon a joint production – split the costs and, hopefully, split the box office. Now, to most theatre producers, this is a perfectly reasonable suggestion. However, the set-up costs to Brendan would be around £50–60,000. Now, Brendan didn’t have fifty/sixty pence. In reality, he owed more than £2 million.

  ‘I was feckin’ fecked,’ he says, summing up his financial position with clarity and colour. ‘And I told John this.’

  However, John Costigan had envisaged this problem and had a plan.

  ‘Look, Brendan. Denis says he will advance you the money. And he will later take it off the top of the bestseller.’

  ‘Bestselling what? I haven’t even an idea.’

  ‘Ah, but Denis says you’ll come up with something.’

  ‘So, I said okay. And I really appreciated this. Denis is a really kind man. But then over the next couple of months I thought and wondered what the hell I would write about. And I realised I had to look back at what had failed, and bury it in my head. But I also had to look back and realise what had succeeded.

  ‘And it came to me. Mrs Browne had succeeded. The radio stories had been a great success. And the books had done great business. And I thought, “What about a Mrs Browne play?” Then I began to think what would give an Agnes Browne play a device, an obvious backdrop for tension. And I thought, “A wedding. That could be the answer!” And with that in mind I wrote the play in four days.’

  It was a phenomenal effort. Typing eighty pages of script alone could take a couple of days.

  ‘I suppose the character was already in my head, and I found her so easy to write for. I’d go to bed at night and dream up storylines for her. I just knew how she would react in any situation.’

  Of course he did. He was writing about his own life. He was writing about his mammy. He was writing about the relationship between a mother and her kids, which could change in a heartbeat from ‘loving the very bones of them’, as Agnes would say, to trashing them with a wicked one-liner. When Brendan came up with the storylines he only had to think about the confusion in his own house, of how his mother was so switched on, but couldn’t switch on a fridge. He only had to recall the wisdom, the philosophy of Maureen O’Carroll, and transpose it into another frame. He also knew of the depth of the relationship between an Irish mother and her sons, and he knew the debates that came about as daughters grew into their mothers. He only had to think about how his mother could be a little hoity-toity at times to come up with Agnes’s telephone voice, or the faint hint of deference she’d show when meeting Maria’s posh mother. Brendan might not have realised it at the time, but his mammy was looking down on him as he battered the typewriter keys. But the real reason Brendan found it so easy? He loved writing about this world, his own world, which he could now recreate in fictional form. And, as for the supporting cast? Brendan based them on characters he’d known as a kid, taking elements of personality and amplifying them.

  Brendan already had his key characters. Jenny played Cathy, Derek Reddin played Rory, Dino was played by Gerry Browne, Dermot was Simon Young and Mark was played by Ciaron McMahon, who played Tony in The Course. Eilish played Winnie McGoogan.

  The storyline is simple: Agnes Browne is trying to plan her son Trevor’s wedding to the posh Maria, aided by her gay son Rory and his lunatic hairdresser boyfriend, Dino.

  Audiences are invited along for the hen party, a stag party and a dinner party with a difference. And when Agnes tries to impress her son’s prospective mother-in-law by installing a new downstairs toilet – well, you can just imagine.

  ‘So I rang John Costigan and told him I’d written a script and I offered to send it over. But John and Denis said they were happy to see it on opening night.

  ‘That, to me, was a massive vote of confidence. And I will never forget Denis for giving me that lift.’

  Yet, while Brendan was able to capture Agnes’s voice on radio, how could he possibly look like a 60-year-old woman? He rang Tom McInnerney, who’d worked on Grandad’s Sure.

  ‘I said, “Look, you know Mrs Browne, you’ve read about her, I want you to make me up as Mrs Browne.”’

  But there was a slight catch. Brendan didn’t want any mirrors in the room. He didn’t want to see the transformation take place. He wanted to see the complete, finished result.

  ‘I was made up and I began talking as Mrs Browne, using the voice saying, “Mary had
a little lamb . . .” and as I talked I walked towards a mirror, looked up and said [Mrs Browne voice], “Hello!” – and she was standing there in front of me. I thought, “This is going to work.”’

  Writing the play had given Brendan confidence. He sensed he had a winner. The plan was to open Mrs Browne’s Last Wedding in Cork, at the Everyman Palace Theatre, for five nights, before moving on to Dublin.

  Brendan didn’t want to open the production in Dublin: that would be too risky with an untested play. Far better to open out of town, take the opportunity to iron out wrinkles, see if the cast all gelled, and make the mistakes that wouldn’t matter too much.

  That said, he desperately wanted the Cork run to work. He knew that good reviews would reach his home town.

  The next step was to call Gerry in and ask him to arrange dates in Liverpool, Glasgow and Manchester. Brendan knew he had to tour. He knew he could make money.

  But then everything seemed to be going mad. Things weren’t helped by the reception the cast received when they arrived in Cork, on the day before the Monday show.

  Brendan was met by the front-of-house manager, who announced that the sales were ‘disappointing’, which is a trade euphemism for ‘You may as well open an artery and let the blood flow into the stalls.’

  Brendan was knocked by the news, but he took an upbeat line, saying, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He tried to console himself with the fact that this was just a warm-up for Dublin. And he desperately hoped the week in Cork would at least pay for itself.

  There was another worrying sign, however. Good first-night reviews are vital to the success of a play, but on opening night, the reviewer for the Cork Examiner was ill, so the paper sent their opera/culture critic.

  ‘The house manager was shitting himself when she arrived.’

  Brendan was truly nervous. He was dragging his old debts around and was also risking having to pay back Denis Desmond’s investment, should the play go belly-up. The last thing he wanted was for the first review to be negative.

  Bizarrely, given how skint Ireland’s two Likely Lads were, Brendan and Gerry decided to donate the profits from their world premiere show to the Chernobyl Children’s Project. And it wasn’t uncharacteristic of the pair. They gave money over to charity projects on a regular basis.