The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll (34 page)

Accepting his award, Brendan thanked fans of the show and his cast. And in a nod to the fact he was employing almost everyone he knew, added a dedication to Maureen O’Carroll.

‘The only person that’s not in the show is my mother. And that’s because she is dead.’

The success story hasn’t stopped. Brendan signed a deal to syndicate the
Mrs Brown’s Boys
cartoon series around the world, and was also offered the chance to write the Mrs Brown movie he’d always wanted, with a £3.6 million budget, backed by the BBC and Universal Pictures. The working title is
Mrs Brown’s Boys – D’fillum.

‘I’ve got a great idea for it,’ he said, speaking from Florida. ‘I’ve got no time to write it, but I’ll get it done.’

He’ll write it himself this time. He’ll star in it, alongside the usual cast and perhaps a few famous names.

‘I’d like to have U2 make an appearance as the wedding band.’

The fillum won’t be a remake of Anjelica Huston’s
Agnes Browne.
It will be an out-and-out comedy, along the lines of the classic sitcom movies such as
On The Buses
and
Up Pompeii
. Will it work? The storyline will see Agnes Brown battle against developers, politicians and bankers who team up to close a Dublin fruit market. Agnes enlists the help of Cathy’s new boyfriend, who’s a solicitor (Brendan hopes
Downton Abbey
star Hugh Bonneville will play the role), and rolls up her cardie sleeves in preparation for war.

Brendan’s idea is solid. And he didn’t have to look too far for inspiration. His mother Maureen O’Carroll once fought against injustice on a national scale. And if she were alive today, Brendan believes it’s the sort of cause his mother would be fighting.

He will also bring back
Mrs Brown’s Boys
for a 2013 TV Christmas special. But can he cope with the pressure of writing while continuing to perform?

‘I have convinced myself that I always write better when I am under pressure, which is just a cover-up for leaving everything to the last minute. I have always written alone but I have no discipline whatsoever. Jenny is the one that drives me. As well as being an exceptional muse, without her I would sit and read all day.’

So he says, but it seems unlikely, given his fear of becoming lazy, and the fact he hasn’t stopped racing forward from the moment he could crawl. And he loves to create stories.

‘Sometimes it comes really easily, just flows. But then there are those horrible, horrible times when it is just word-by-word, and you wonder why you ever told anybody you were a writer, because you just write shite.’

The ‘shite’ is set to make Brendan O’Carroll more than £50 million over the next five years. In 2014, he’ll tour Australia and Canada with the show. When the tickets were announced in Australia, where the TV series is a smash hit, eight millon dollars’ worth were sold in 24 hours, before the hotlines overloaded. And that was just for two of the venues of a nine-city tour.

To add to the growing O’Carroll legend, the US Comedy Channel have bought the rights to screen his sitcom. And several European broadcasters have bought the format rights, which means a Slovenian or Turkish Agnes is about to appear on television anytime soon.

Yet, the boy from Finglas, who’d once had to rely upon his uncles Vincent and Paul to eat, hasn’t turned his back on the world he grew up in. There aren’t many Irish charities he doesn’t support, such as providing 1,500 poverty-stricken families with Christmas turkey dinners, via the St Vincent de Paul organisation.

And he’s been working with autism agencies, giving over money to buy iPads for kids, which is reckoned to improve their cognitive awareness.

‘For some reason, autistic kids like the show. Experts don’t know why, perhaps it’s the swearing, who knows? One woman wrote to me to express her gratitude that her son had said his first word when watching the show. I laughed when I read what it was. “Bastard”.’

As for
Mrs Brown’s Boys
, it has now entered the league of classic television, one of the shows that will be talked about for decades to come. Why does it work? Agnes Brown, of course. Every family has one: the busybody, the scathing commentator, the women with bile on her breath who can still hug her kids like they are babies.

There’s a wonderful innocence, a naivety, which harks back to Maureen O’Carroll not realising the fridge wasn’t in fact a shiny cupboard. Mrs Brown is also an enigma. She’s a much-loved housewife, except that she’s a man.

Brendan has long argued Agnes is his mammy, or she’s part Dolly Dowdall, or she’s Gerry Browne’s mammy, or she’s the women from Moore Street. But she’s aggressive. Sometimes wicked. There must be something of Brendan O’Carroll in there too? He laughs mischievously as he answers.

‘There is a bit of her in me, all right. I have five sisters and lost my dad very young, so life for me has always been from a female perspective.’

What’s clear is the major influence for Agnes Brown is Maureen O’Carroll. And Agnes is Maureen is Brendan. Maureen O’Carroll lives on in the form of her youngest son, the special one. He has her mindset, her intelligence and quick-wittedness, and, just as importantly, her voice. Not only in a physical sense, with his rasping pitch, but in his ability to cremate an offender at three paces. Brendan, like Maureen, can make a passing remark that can practically hospitalise – and get laughs in the process. What’s evident is that his early life spent adoring and absorbing – and often battling – with this force of nature has helped form his own personality. And the result of this amazing alchemy, which the world can wallow in, is the wonderfully irascible Agnes Brown.

Mrs Brown’s Boys
is one of the biggest sitcoms of the twenty-first century, yet its comic roots are in variety theatre and Sixties sitcoms. And while modern media demands slick and sophisticated, Mrs Brown is rude, crude and lewd. Why do you laugh when you shouldn’t?

And while many modern hit comedies emerge from big writing teams, Mrs Brown is the invention of one very clever man. Is it magic? Perhaps it’s just feckin’ funny.

Brendan himself isn’t sure why it all works.

‘The funny thing about it is that basically I’m doing what I’ve been doing for many years, but I think it’s just a question of timing.

‘We’re in a recession and people are scared, people are a bit down. So they need a laugh first of all and, traditionally, no matter who you are, comedy always does well in a recession. But in dark times people also get nostalgic. They want to look back at the times when summers were longer, the Christmases were brighter and family life was better. And we remind them of that.

‘But all this is guesswork. I can only think what my mammy used to say about disco music. You don’t analyse it, you just dance to it. And it is what it is. There are people who will love it, and people who won’t. But I think the people who love it are the audience that comedy forgot.’

Brendan argues that alternative comedy in the 1980s killed off mainstream humour for a time.

‘I think somebody at the BBC read in a magazine that comedy is the new rock’n’roll. And they actually believed that, and started pitching it only to the 18- to 25-year-old market. And left the rest behind. But we’re redressing the balance. We’re going for the audience that loves to laugh out loud.’

And they do. And the success is down to Brendan O’Carroll’s drive, his self-belief, his ability to almost walk out of a meeting for his sitcom pilot and bluff his way to a 12-episode deal.

Brendan is still a gambler, he still has the cheek of the devil and, as Agnes Brown would most likely say, testicles the size of turnips.

‘Way back, when I’d only been doing stand-up for a year or so, I got a call from a guy who wanted me to do a date. I’d already booked a caravan holiday, so I said, “Sorry, I can’t.” He said, “OK, I’ll give you £500.” I said, “No, I’m actually not working that weekend.” He rang me back later: “OK, then it’s £750. And that’s me last offer.” I said, “Look, I’m not working,” and he said, “You’ve some cheek . . . Right then, £1,500 – and that’s it!” I said, “What date did you want me to do?”

‘I learnt a lesson then. The scarcer you are, the more valuable you are.’

What Brendan also has is innate belief in his own ability.

‘Funny lines just come naturally to me. Of course, it’s a bit like playing snooker, you can pot the black a thousand times in practice, but you still have to go out and do it on the night. But no matter what other problems I’ve had in my life, making people laugh has never been one of them.’

Where does Brendan go from here? He filmed a pilot show for the BBC,
Mrs Brown’s Celebrity Quiz Show
, but decided not to progress the idea for now, for fear of overexposing the Agnes Brown brand.

However, he will continue to tour for the foreseeable future, making vast fortunes in the process (a week in Dublin alone at Christmas 2013 will produce ticket sales of £1.6 million) and making sure every one of his troupe has the mortgage paid off and is set for life.

He’s now talking again about going into politics some day soon. He’ll certainly be able to afford to.

But has success changed him? He’s been well known in Ireland since the early Nineties, but now he’s a global celebrity.

‘I believe in being nice to people. I believe in trying to make someone’s day, as I did when I was a waiter at the Gresham in Dublin. I also believe in karma, what goes around comes around. And not just in heaven. You get the payback on earth. For example, I was in a restaurant in LA during the
Agnes Browne
film development process, and we were having a meal in a restaurant when suddenly the diners stopped eating, everyone got up and left. O. J. Simpson had walked in.’

But it’s hard to keep your feet on the ground when you’re in constant demand, from promoters, film and TV executives. And from a writer trying to pull together his biography. The
Tuesdays With Morrie
sessions in Glasgow have been on hold for a little while.

‘We will get back to them soon, I promise you. I loved our chats. But it’s different now. To not be able to get from the check-in to the aeroplane without stopping for forty photographs is really weird.

‘I don’t even think my mother, if she were alive, would want a photograph of me.’

Twenty years ago, however, Brendan was asked what he’d do if he ever became famous.

‘I’d get someone to take a photo of me standing next to my 747 jet while sipping a cocktail, and I’d send it to one of the teachers who said I’d never amount to anything.’

And now that he’s an overnight success story at the age of 58?

‘I know at some stage I’m not going to be here and I’d like to leave something to my children and to my grandchildren. Hopefully the royalties coming in off the books, the TV series, the animation series and the rights we sell worldwide . . . well, no matter what happens to me, my grandchildren will be all right.’

His face breaks into a grin.

‘And I’m old enough to know that me going out and getting a Maserati or a Ferrari is just not on. I’d look like a wart on a frog’s arse.’

Brendan doesn’t need the flash car. It’s enough for him to know he’s made millions of people laugh the world over. He’s a one-man recession tonic. And his own smile has never been wider.

‘I’m just enjoying it all, Brian. My life, so far, has been magical.’

He’s written his own Spielberg ending. But Agnes Brown would play it all down. She’d probably sum up Brendan’s phenomenal success with her catchphrase.

‘That’s nice.’