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BRENDAN O’CARROLL roars with laughter when I mention tabloid rumours that he is killing off Mrs Brown’s Boys. “That’s like asking a jockey if he’s willing to shoot his horse,” he says, peppering the sentence with colourful expletives. “It’s complete baloney.
“Mrs Brown has educated my kids, she’s bought my home... I intend to keep writing the show for as long as people want it.”
Brendan, 64, has made a fortune from his potty-mouthed creation. Mrs Brown’s blend of pathos, slapstick and earthy vulgarity has made her a runaway sitcom smash. But two decades ago, the Dublin-born comedian was “as skint as a badger”.
In 1997, he wrote and directed Sparrow’s Trap, a movie that had to be abandoned halfway through filming after the distributor pulled out, leaving him with eye-watering debts of £2.2million.
“It scared the living daylights out of me,” the fast-talking star admits. “There were days when I didn’t get out of my pyjamas. I was a little bit lost.”
At his lowest ebb, Brendan turned to prayer.that night his late mother
Maureen appeared in “a vivid dream” and told him “Get off your knees and do something about it” (expletives obviously deleted).
It worked. “I thought, ‘She’s right, action is the answer’,” he says.
Another “woman” proved his salvation. He’d created Agnes Brown for Irish radio in the early ’90s when her surname was Browne with an extra E. (He claims Dublin station 2FM paid him in T-shirts).
After bluffing that he’d written a five-minute radio soap based on the character, he spent a whole weekend churning out the first 10 episodes.
Then promoter Denis Desmond offered him a slot at a London theatre and Irish TV host Gay Byrne suggested he write a play based on the radio character.
“Write a screenplay, he said... I didn’t know what a screenplay was! So I bought a book by Syd Field and started writing the background to the character. Before I knew it, I was 100 pages in. I rang a publisher and because I was on the radio he took it.”
His novel The Mammy ended up a New York Times bestseller. “Then the phone rang and a voice said they were from Disney,” he recalls. “I said ‘ **** off!’ and hung up. I thought it was one of me mates messing about.”
Luckily Disney called back.they put Brendan together with Anjelica Huston and the result was the 1999 film Agnes Browne.
Says Brendan: “Rosie O’donnell was going to play her but she was having her second baby and doing a show with Fox, which is why Anjelica ended up in the role, as well as directing and producing.
“It was fantastic. Every day I went to Venice Beach in Los Angeles to work on the film with her.
“In the book, I’d had Agnes as a Cliff Richard fan but Anjelica said, ‘Cliff’s too goody-goody, I see her more as a Tom Jones fan’. So she calls her assistant and says ‘Get me Tom Jones on the phone’. Tom called back within minutes and he was in!
“I suggested Raywinstone to play debt collector Mr Billy and she says ‘I’ll get him’ and she did... it was such a confidence booster.
“I was just 41 and even before Sparrow’s Trap, I’d been struggling as a stand-up. I remember spending my last penny on petrol to get to a gig in Galway only to find they’d cancelled it.”
US film critics were harsh – the New York Times dubbed it “nothing more than a series of homey skits loosely woven into a portrait of a working class saint”.
UK critics were equally dismissive when Mrs Brown arrived as a sitcom in 2011. But no other current comedy pulls an audience of nine million, or hits a Christmas Day high of 11.52 million.
The show is as warm-hearted as it is risque. Like Les Dawson before him, Brendan’s Mrs Brown gurns and mugs and theatrically adjusts her fake boobs. Unlike Les, he leaves in the mistakes.
Right now, Brendan is in Glasgow filming this year’s festive TV specials. Mrs Brown’s Boys D’musical? is back touring next month with runs in Belfast, Liverpool and Sheffield.
“It’s one of the funniest shows we’ve done,” he says. “The idea that Agnes can do a musical in itself is hilarious. One of the songs is about a prostitute who mugs a fella with his trousers around his ankles...”
Classy then.the stage musical begins immediately after 2014’s Mrs Brown’s Boys D’movie ended. Dublin’s salt of the earth stallholders have won their court case against the developers who wanted to close Moore Street market. Now they must find the £75,000 legal costs...
Agnes has the answer. “She’s too old to go on the game so she decides to mount a fund-raising musical instead,” her alter ego grins.
Brendan’s real mother was very different. She was an Irish Labour Party MP who set up a women’s refuge in 1950s Dublin.
His father, Gerard, who died young, was a carpenter who built beds on the walls of their Finglas “like a submarine”.
Brendan, the youn school at 12 to work Growing up he’d cha children a penny a he his backyard shows. turned to comedy wh venture went belly-u
He now lives in Flo performed stand-up the 1990s. “I used to $200 a night,” he say that on accomodatio
The exception was Boston, the Blacktho him for $1,000 and “can drink”, he says. “bacon.” Now come w he does US shows, h Blackthorn.
Brendan has three his first marriage to D Their first child, Bren bifida shortly after h
He is happily marr Gibney, who plays hi Cathy.
Mrs Brown’s Boys family affair.the cast Brendan’s daughter F whose wife Amanda
Mrs Brown’s story radio episodes, 34 TV specials, three novels films and the musical
What next? “I’m w novel and Netflix has it,” says Brendan. “I’ up to D’movie.what
“Well, the only thi is Mrs Brown on Ice.
Don’t put it past hi
● Tickets for Mrs Bro D’musical?:ticketma