The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll (33 page)

Audiences who’d gone to see a Mrs Brown show three or four times a year were cutting back, clearly feeling the pinch.

Brendan and Jenny had serious talks. They had brought in several millions in ticket prices since they’d formed their company nine years ago, but their outgoings were horrendous – and rising – while ticket sales were ever-decreasing. Brendan didn’t pay Equity minimum, he paid top dollar, and he had more than 20 cast and crew working on the show.

For a year or so, he’d had to cut back on costs, paying the actors for their working stints as opposed to guaranteeing their wages all year round. But this couldn’t continue. The bank account revealed the bottom line: Brendan and Jenny were skint.

The train Brendan and his company had ridden for so long was slowing down. Added to which, he and Jenny couldn’t count on the sitcom amounting to anything; the odds were stacked high against them. And by the time the troupe arrived in Hull, at the New Theatre, in November 2009, it was about to go off the rails.

The show went well enough; the cast enjoyed themselves on stage, but they were more subdued than they would normally have been. They sensed the reality. They sensed that the fat lady had sung for the very last time.

At the end of the show, Brendan confirmed the cast’s worst fears. It was over. He and Jenny couldn’t afford to keep the show on the road.

His family, his friends, who were – to all intents and purposes – as close to him as family; the people he’d brought together to form this amazingly successful band of brothers and sisters, had to be disbanded. They’d have to find new jobs. They’d have to go it alone. For most, the prospect was terrifying.

The tears flowed. The sadness was palpable. The dream was over. This was certainly not an ending Spielberg would have written for
Mrs Brown’s Boys
. And they all went back to their hotel disconsolate. And for the next two weeks they grieved, and wondered what to do with their lives.

But then the Hollywood moment did come about. Brendan called one afternoon to announce the news.

‘Brian, we’ve got the green light for the sitcom series! We’ve done it! It’s actually going to happen. I told you I’d be famous.

‘And I told Jenny something really good would come out of meeting you. And it has. You’re not a friend. You’re family. And we love you.’

The fortune teller had called it right. Brendan was set to be a star.

Agnes Brown’s World

WHEN Brendan was a little boy growing up in Finglas, watching television was a delight – but also the cause of constant frustration. No sooner had he settled down to watch
Coronation Street
, which he still loves, or American imports such as
I Love Lucy
or
The Fugitive
, than the coin meter on the back of the television would run out.

Maureen O’Carroll was all too often so strapped for the two-shilling piece required to bounce Lucille Ball’s face back onto the screen. She’d hunt around the house, looking for a button that would fit the slot, and pay the price later when the electricity man came to collect.

In the New Year of 2010, Brendan allowed himself a smile when he thought back to those times. Not only could he afford to power as many TVs as he chose, he was set to become not just a TV star, but a co-producer of his own series, in partnership with BBC1 in the UK and RTÉ One in Ireland.

This meant he would be paid a dividend on every show sold abroad and every DVD released. And he was set to earn serious money. All the Can-Do Kid had to do was deliver six cleverly crafted episodes.

That in itself wasn’t a major task, now that he’d cracked the magic formula. After all, he had 18 years of Agnes, from the radio scripts to the stage shows, to ‘borrow’ from.

‘I have absolutely no problem recycling old gags. The old is new if it hasn’t been seen for a long time. And, you know, every time we have a new child, we tell them the same fairy tales we were told when we were kids. And they still sound great.’

What a great argument for reworking theatre plots as TV scripts. But would it attract a modern audience? And while Mrs Brown was a working-class favourite, would he widen the demographic and appeal to polite society? Would suburban England, for example, accept his feckin’ language?

The series wouldn’t be filmed until the end of the year.

Meantime,
Mrs Brown’s Boys
continued to tour. The show that had died in Hull had been brought right back to life, thanks to the defibrillator that was television. And a special highlight of the summer tour was a return to Toronto, and a chance for Brendan and co. to meet up with his sister, Fiona.

The cast and crew were living in hotels in the city and Fiona invited them, en masse, to her home out in Buckhorn for a barbecue.

The team travelled by bus, but Brendan, who’s not a country boy at all, drove. After two hours, he arrived in the nearest large town, Peterborough, and figured the journey had been pleasant enough. But then he had to make his way through dirt roads, over rivers and hills for another hour, all the time surrounded by dense forests. When he arrived at Fiona’s house, it seemed like the middle of nowhere.

He pulled into the driveway, got out of the car and hugged his sister with a pitying smile. ‘Fiona, why didn’t you tell me you were in the Witness Protection Programme?’

During the Toronto stint, Brendan revealed his steely side. The godfather loved his extended family, but he wouldn’t see them step out of line. And it was obvious some of the cast were not up to speed with their lines. Brendan read them the riot act.

‘We’re in Canada to work. This is not a vacation! So tomorrow when you show up, you’d better know your lines. And think on this: where else would you make so much money for working three hours a night?’

Brendan’s hairdryer treatment worked. But, back across the pond, would his sitcom create as much heat? The series was filmed in Glasgow at the end of the year, and audiences queued up for tickets. He was playing to the converted, of course. What really mattered would be the viewing figures on transmission. Thankfully, when the first show was broadcast on 21 February 2011, the audience reaction was positive, with almost three million tuning in; a good figure for a post-watershed slot. Some newspaper writers loved it, such as
The Times
and
The Guardian
, describing it as ‘postmodern’ and ‘hilarious’.

However, there were critics who would cheerfully have drowned Agnes Brown in a bath of Foley’s cider.

‘The whole thing is entirely predicated on viewers finding a man dressed as a foul-mouthed elderly woman intrinsically funny,’ noted the TV reviewer with the
Irish Times
. ‘If you do, you’re away in a hack, and the viewing figures are astronomical, but if you don’t, and you think that died out with Les Dawson and Dick Emery, then it’s a long half-hour.’

The
Irish Independent
’s
comment not only gave Agnes and her entourage a kicking, the writer then stepped on her glasses and smashed them.

‘
Mrs Brown’s Boys
is the type of TV programme that makes you vaguely embarrassed to be Irish.’

It wasn’t just the Irish reviewers who didn’t like the show. Nor was it the broadsheets. Some of the tabloids such as Scotland’s
Daily Record
described the show as ‘dire’. Did Brendan care?

‘I don’t give a toss about the critics. We do it for the audience. I don’t want to write something that somebody in such-and-such newspaper would like. I can only write what makes me laugh, and as a writer you hope the audience will agree.’

The audience did agree. The numbers swelled and the first 2011 Christmas Special achieved 6.61 million viewers. The Christmas Eve and Boxing Day shows were the most watched programmes on TV, achieving a total of 15 million views per episode, including repeats.

The bandwagon rolled on.
Mrs Brown’s Boys
had been nominated for a BAFTA award in 2011, stunning (almost) the critics into silence, and in 2012 the show was nominated again. Would it win this time around?

Jenny reckoned it would, and cleared a space on the windowsill. Brendan wasn’t happy, though. He was afraid she would jinx the big night. But he didn’t have to worry.
Mrs Brown’s Boys
won the BAFTA, the most prestigious prize in British television, for Best Situation Comedy.

Brendan and the team celebrated like there was no tomorrow.

‘It’s mad.’

The award gave the show a new impetus. Foreign sales grew, with the show expanding worldwide to Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, South Africa, Turkey, Slovakia and Romania. It wasn’t hard to see why. As Brendan says, ‘Mrs Brown is everybody’s mammy. She’s the Jewish mama, she’s the black mammy. She’s a universal creature. Most societies have such a creature, this woman who would lay down in front of a train for her kids.

‘I had the idea at one point of taking Mrs Brown to Broadway, with an Italian, Jewish or black actress playing Agnes. It may still happen.’

What had also happened by this time was that the Mrs Brown stage shows had become a huge box-office success. The troupe were no longer playing to a couple of hundred people in Hull, they were now playing in arenas up and down the country, to five and six thousand fans at the likes of the Manchester and Nottingham arenas. And the audiences knew exactly what to expect.

‘The last thing I wanted to do was a sanitised version of Mrs Brown on TV and have a nice audience coming to the theatre and saying, “Holy Shit, what is this?” But thankfully, the BBC supported us all the way.’

The halls are so big, giant screens have to be installed.

Yet, it’s not all about the money. Brendan was offered a $40 million deal with American broadcasters HBO, makers of the likes of
The Sopranos
, which he turned down.

‘It meant going to sit in an office for two years writing sitcoms and never seeing my family. And how much money do you need?

‘We don’t take anything for granted, though. None of us. Bugsy was a window-cleaner, Pepsi was a mechanic, Rory worked in EMI, Jenny worked in the bank, Eilish worked for Guinness and I was a waiter.

‘You’re always terrified that one day they will find out you are a waiter and want their money back.

‘But here’s the thing. And this is the most important thing. I work when I want, I can take off to Florida and be with my wife, my kids and my grandchildren. What money can do for you is buy you time, and that’s the time off to spend with people you want to spend it with. And when I do work, I’m with the people I love. In that respect we’re all really lucky. We’re like the feckin’ Partridge Family.’

Playing sell-out shows to giant crowds every night has certainly made pulling on the Agnes wig and cheap skirt far less of a task.

‘When that first laugh comes from those five thousand people, it’s actually so loud it moves your clothes. You can actually feel your clothes vibrating. I just love being on stage. I love the power it gives you. I love to see the faces of the women in the front row. I love to be able to talk to the audiences at the end of the night, to read their requests, because that extends the connection I have with them. And while performers often don’t want to meet the fans, I’ll stand outside and sign autographs until my wrist aches. I know how much they love to meet the performers. And I get as much of a buzz from meeting them, hearing them say how much they’ve loved the show, as they get from me. Being up there on that stage and watching an audience laugh is one of the greatest feelings in the world.’

Does it beat sex?

‘No, although at the end of the show I do get a round of applause.’

Yet, despite the astonishing global success of the show, Brendan, in a quiet moment of detachment, now admits that sometimes the critics can get to him.

‘I can learn from some of them but, truthfully, they also hurt. God, they are just like somebody taking a hot rod and sticking it in the middle of your back. It’s a terrible, horrible feeling.

‘Anyone would tell you, it doesn’t matter how big the ratings are, it doesn’t matter if you get two hundred magnificent critiques. When you get one bad one, that’s the one that puts a knot in your stomach – and just twists it. It’s the one bad one that always sticks in your mind.

‘I haven’t read them in ages but that doesn’t make a difference, because there is always someone willing to tell you about it.

‘Yet, at the end of the day, I don’t do this for them. They’re the only ones who don’t pay for a ticket. They get in for free.’

And, as always, he makes sure he gives value for money, especially now that show prices have been hiked for the big venues.

‘I know for those buying tickets, it’s not just about spending twenty-five euros or whatever. It’s about getting your suit dry-cleaned, your hair done, the babysitter in, a few drinks beforehand. And I don’t want my bit to be the bit that lets that night down.’

Television had fuelled the live shows’ success, which in turn shot the TV audiences to the eight million-plus mark. And, in January 2013, now on the third series of the show,
Mrs Brown’s Boys
won the National Television Award for Best Situation Comedy.