‘I owe my success to Mrs Brown’

RADIO DJ GARETH O’CALLAGHAN ON HOW BRENDAN O’CARROLL’S CHARACTER SENT AFTERNOON SHOW RATINGS SKY HIGH

AS he celebrates 45 years on radio, Irish DJ Gareth O’Callaghan today reveals the iconic ‘woman’ who gave him a leg up the ladder to success — the one and only Agnes Brown.

In an exclusive interview, Dubliner O’Callaghan, who now lives in Cork, also recalls the advice he received from radio king Larry Gogan when he was a teenager and tells how the legendary Gay Byrne took him under his wing.

After cutting his teeth in radio on the pirate stations during the 1980s, Gareth got his big break when he landed an afternoon show on RTE’s 2fm pop station, joining a hit team that included Larry Gogan, Gerry Ryan, Ian Dempsey, Simon Young, Tony Fenton and Dave Fanning.

But the much-loved DJ admits he was struggling to build an audience until Brendan O’Carroll, aka Agnes Brown, walked into his life back in 1992.

“After the first year my boss Bill O’Donovan said, ‘Your ratings are hopeless. You took over a show with low ratings and they’ve plummeted even more, there’s something wrong.’

“Ian Wilson [producer] decided to make it wild and wacky and we invented some characters. We had wind up phone calls and items such as You Can’t Be Serious! where Jimmy Magee would read crazy stories from America’s National Enquirer like he was commentating on a boxing match.

TEARS

“Then this guy Brendan O’Carroll turned up at reception looking for me. I met him and he said, ‘I have a cassette here, it’s a pilot of a radio soap opera called Mrs Brown’s Boys.’ In true Brendan style he added, ‘If you don’t wet your knickers listening to this laughing you’ll never find anything funny.’

“We went out to my car, pushed the cassette in and, honestly, the tears were streaming down my face. He said, ‘This is radio gold, put it on your radio show.’ And that’s where it all kicked off for Mrs Brown’s Boys… and me.

“When I played it to Ian he thought it was hilarious, but said, ‘It’s a bit Dublinesque… we might need to spice it up with a couple of rural characters. I said, ‘OK. I’ll do them,’ and I became a policeman from Mullingar and a priest from Cork.”

A few months later the listenership figures for the radio shows landed. “Because there was no social media back in the 1990s we had no idea who was listening,” Gareth says.

“Bill called me in and said, ‘I just got your ratings back and I’ve had to do a double check.’ I said, ‘Is it that bad?’ ‘Bad?” he said, “The last day I talked to you, you had about 80,000 listeners of a national audience. Now we’re looking at about 270,000!

“The popularity of the show continued to go through the roof. I remember Gerry [Ryan] saying to me one day, ‘I don’t remember afternoon listenership figures being anything like that.’ He was commanding 350,000 we were then about 280,000.

“Marian [Finucane] stopped me in the corridor one day and she was fascinated by it. Gay stopped me and said, ‘My daughters say your show is the best thing on radio. I thought mine was!’

“In the Christmas show we had a Nativity play and Brendan suggested asking Marian to narrate it. After Liveline one day I asked her and she immediately agreed when she heard it.

“The following year the Nativity

play had one of the sheep go missing and Brendan asked could we record a piece with Gay where Mrs Brown would ring his radio show and put out a plea to find the missing sheep.

“I think it took seven takes to record it because Gay was laughing so much. His radio show jingle would play and Mrs Brown was on the phone and Gay would say, ‘You are looking for a missing sheep?’ And Mrs Brown would say how she was afraid the sheep would get into the wrong hands… and that would set Gay off and then Brendan would be in convulsions.

“Mrs Brown’s Boys really did become a phenomenon on the show and made it a massive success.

“Brendan found out one day that a petition had been sent around Mountjoy Prison from the inmates to the Governor asking that they be locked up in their cells between four and five and not three and four because Mrs Brown’s Boys was broadcast at

4.30 every afternoon. We just thought this was mad.”

After two massively successful years on the Gareth O’Callaghan show, Brendan O’Carroll moved on with Mrs Brown’s Boys. “Obviously Brendan had his eyes on bigger things, which was understandable as he was making peanuts on the radio show with Mrs Brown’s Boys.

Gay brought him on to The Late Late Show where he announced that he had a book in the pipeline and live shows. It led to the success we see today. I’m often asked, ‘Did he give you a share in the wealth?’ Even two per cent I would have been happy with,” Gareth laughs.

Looking back on his 17 years with RTE, O’Callaghan, who now presents a four-hour Saturday show on Classic Hits FM, says it was the best of times.

VIBRANT

“When I look back on my memories of RTE it was a time when it was so vibrant and alive,” Gareth says. “It was full of characters like Charlie Bird and Gerry Ryan and you were guaranteed to meet at least one of them every day you went in. It was an incredible opportunity that I got.”

He remembers ringing RTE as a teenager looking for advice.

“Back in 1975 when I was 14 I rang RTE one night and I said to the receptionist who answered that I’d like to talk to somebody about becoming a DJ,” Gareth reveals.

“The line went silent for a moment and then a voice answered and it was Larry Gogan. I said I’m just ringing to ask about becoming a disc jockey. I thought he’d fob me off but he said, ‘Oh right, I’m a DJ.’ I said, ‘Is that Larry Gogan?’ He said, ‘It is indeed, who is this?’ I said, ‘My name is Gareth O’Callaghan.’ He spent 40 minutes on the phone with me, advising me. Larry was an amazing human being.”

When Gay Byrne was winding down his career he asked O’Callaghan to become his producer and present two of his shows every week.

“If somebody said to me, ‘What are the most memorable experiences of working in RTE?’ I think that would be one of the greatest,” Gareth adds.

Gareth says he feels “blessed” to be still working as a DJ after suffering a series of health issues.

In 2018, he was diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy, a serious neurological illness. He has also battled back from serious injuries he suffered in a horror car crash in Cork last March.

“I’m lucky to have survived that one. They had to cut the roof off the car to get me out. I broke my back, fractured my neck, smashed my pelvis, punctured my lung and there were injuries to my bladder and bowel. It was looking very bad for me at one point.

“There was a big question mark for the first few days as to whether I’d be able to walk again. I’m blessed I’m here today. People joke that I’m like a cat with nine lives. I don’t want to know how many of them I have left. I have been very lucky.”