I'm Brendan, Fly Me

By the time I get to HQ, the venue for his new show in November, Brendan O Carroll and his management team are leaving to record radio jingles at RTE. O Carroll has been ensconced in a corner as every entertainment journalist in Dublin asked him the same half dozen questions about his new show. Entitled Millennium? Ask Me Y2K, it marks his return to stand up work after an absence of some years. A multi-media performance of music, comedy and video screen sketches, it s also a significant departure from his previous one-man outings.
I hover in the background as O Carroll signs yet another autograph and chats at length to a group of fans at the next table. This is all very well but I m running out of time. Finally he approaches. Howya Stevo, he grins. (How does he know my name?) I ve got to run but we ll get together over the weekend, all the time you need, here s me number, can we give you a lift anywhere? I am not the sort of person who thinks they like Brendan O Carroll. I am in for a rude awakening.

Sunday, Thomas Read s, O Carroll arrives with his two youngest children in tow. Danny and Eric are well used to this sort of carry on surrounding their dad, and settle down with a Latte and a Diet Coke respectively. Following his separation from partner Doreen, his time with his kids is limited and I apologise for the intrusion. Danny suggests that I d be better off interviewing the boys if I want the real deal. He ll scam you . . . he deadpans. Let s find out.
I wanted to do the new show because I miss the buzz of solo performing in front of a live audience, O Carroll opens. Any entertainer who says it s not about ego is a liar. I make no apology for my ego, I m a performer and it really is like a drug: that nervous, almost fearful excitement. It s something you don t get from film, and it s different from theatre in that you put yourself in a position of total responsibility. If it goes well, you feel like a magician, and if it goes badly, you want to puke. But when it goes well...
I ve never done a Christmas show, and I remember the Des Keogh and Rosaleen Linehan review shows when I was a kid. There s nothing like that now, and when I saw the venue I was sold. Basically we re remembering the history of the world through the eyes of the Browne family. Grandad Browne is commenting on the Fifties, Mrs Browne will be doing the 60s and 70s, and Brendan O Carroll will be talking about the 80s and 90s. Also we ll have video sketches and musical numbers, which will facilitate the costume changes.
So is it a scripted piece?
It s half and half really. There s a beginning, a middle and an end to each segment, but obviously you also feed off the audience and whatever else comes into your head as you get into the gig. That s the joy of it, it s unpredictable. I hear other comedians talk about a tough battle with the audience, but it s really a game. They want you to be funny. And I love the attention, on stage and off. The first famous person I ever met was the actor George Peppard, and I ve met loads of people since, but he s the one I remember. And this was way before The A Team! Nowadays I get to do that. Once I asked Steve Davis for an autograph and he fobbed me off, and I remember thinking, I hope you lose . I felt rejected.
If O Carroll is happy to accept acclaim and affection from his public, how does he react to the generally negative press he receives in the mainstream media? Accusations of racism, homophobia and patronising the working classes are a regular part of reviews of his work. For example, the regular homophobic humour on RTE shows like Don t Feed The Gondolas has never been criticised in the media, yet O Carroll has been castigated for less.
I know what s in my heart, and hate isn t funny, and that s what we re talking about here. I have never told a race-related gag in my life, but if I mention two guys walking into a Chinese restaurant . . . someone s going to take offence. Likewise, I tell jokes about my experiences as a kid in Finglas, or two gay guys in a bar . . . people are funny, self-consciousness is funny. In the gag, in myself, in the audience. You re laughing at the situation, not at the character. If I tell a gag about some guys inability to locate his girlfriend s clitoris, that s not a sexist joke!
I used to do a gag about sanitary towels, and while the audience, particularly the women, fell about laughing, a guy comes up after the show and says, There s nuthin funny about periods, pal . Well that s the point. I m glad you realise that, and I hope your wife knows you realise it! The audience makes the leap, they understand that this is fucking comedy, it s not the Irish Times editorial page! Irreverence is good, and you can be irreverent without being disrespectful. While I was in America they banned Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, because it was supposed to be offensive. I mean Jeesus! I just don t get PC, I don t want to be PC.
Listen, a critic, I mean a newspaper critic, is a donkey telling a racehorse how he should have ran the race. My critics are myself and the owners of the backsides that sell out my shows. When we ran Mrs Brown s Boys for The Gerry Ryan Show at 2FM, the prisoners at Wheatfield Prison requested that they might lose an hour of recreation so as they could remain in the cells to hear the broadcasts. That s a good write up.

An interest in movie making was sparked when O Carroll appeared in the Stephen Frears film of Roddy Doyle s novel The Van. His role was well received, and led him to undertake production of his own project, Sparrow s Trap. The film faltered in production, due mainly to financial difficulties, but currently his film of his own novel The Mammy, directed by and starring Angelica Huston, is in post production. How did he find the experience of working in Hollywood?
Well, of course initially I d become involved in writing and performing in plays for the theatre, and that was part of the same experience, a learning process. Obviously it was very different to the stand up shows we d produced before, but the plays worked. In terms of working with actors, I remember overhearing an actor in rehearsal complaining about how hard the work was, and I said that in the two hours we d been working on the scene, a coalman in Finglas had unloaded fifty sacks of coal off a truck on his back, a waiter in central Dublin had done sixty covers in a busy lunch time, a girl in Tallaght had inserted two hundred and fifty identical chips into two hundred and fifty identical computers. That s fucking hard work! It s a challenge, certainly, and it doesn t come easy, but you re doing what you choose to do.
Hollywood was hysterical in that it s just as fucked up and unreal as you d expect, but it s real to them, that s how they work. I ve walked into meetings straight out of The Player, where people are talking about millions of dollars, and when you say good-bye, let s do lunch and close the door, you do go MMMPPPHHHHH! and collapse with laughter, but they re probably inside doing the same. Who was that baldy little Irish guy, Brandon O Who??? But we re doing it, and that s the point. You do have to be prepared for people who have a different vision, another slant on things, but that s the nature of the game.
It seems a far cry from Finglas barrow boy to power lunching in Bel Air. I ask where O Carroll gets the confidence and energy to pursue his goals?
From my mother, he replies immediately. My father died when I was very young and my mother was the dominant figure in my childhood. She was a woman of incredible intellect, a one-time novice nun, a mother of twelve, a TD in later years, and a driven woman. She taught me that nothing was beyond my capability, nothing was out of reach if you were prepared to go for it, if you wanted it enough. She taught me to play chess I mean, no chessboard, no pieces, just in your head when I was seven years old.
In a way, when at thirteen I began to work full time as a waiter, while telling her I was going to school every day, by the way, I got totally landed. Suddenly I was in a place where it just didn t pay dividends to be smart. Or maybe smartarse. I learned very quickly that in order to fit in, to be liked, to have friends, it was best to keep your head down and not fuck with the program, or the programming. And I stayed like that for twenty two years.
Eventually, out of financial necessity, at thirty-five, I decided to become a comedian. I had a family, a mortgage, and I thought I might have a talent. The first time I stood on a stage, alone and remember you can t lie on stage because people won t have it I felt a feeling of warmth and acceptance and yes, power. I was the guy with the mic. I said look over there and everyone looked, I loved it. And I was good at it. And I knew I could do it again.

Success has been kind to O Carroll, but it s come with a price. His sons have retired to his apartment to watch a Gaelic Football match, and I take the opportunity to ask about the break-up of his relationship with his wife, Doreen. Initially he is reticent. It s old news, he insists, and unfair that he should comment when Doreen doesn t have that option. I press him, and briefly I see a spark of the fierce energy that drives him.
What were you doing when you were twenty-five? he challenges.
Actually, I was singing in a rock band, living in a flat and convinced I was going to be Bono, but who s interviewing who here?
I was in a job I hated, I had lost a son, I had a family who depended on me absolutely, everything was governed by that. You adapt, you subjugate your own dreams for the people that you love. That s life. I was happy to do it, I d do it again, but life changes, and doors open and you walk through. I d love to be able to tell you that I walked out because of somebody else in my life, because you d find it good copy, but it just isn t so and my family know that. I love my family and that hasn t changed.
So what plans then for the future?
Well, obviously I m looking forward immensely to the new show, these things generally develop as the run progresses so you re constantly dealing with new stuff. I do have some other creative stuff in the pipeline, and I m starting an airline.
It s my turn. Yer Wha!
Yeah, it s an internal Irish shuttle flight system called Aerin, that will provide flight services to all parts of the country, North and South, for about thirty-five quid return.
What possessed you to start an airline?
Eh . . . , he pauses. Well, Aer Lingus don t do it, nobody else was doing it, so why not? n
Brendan O Carroll s new show Millennium? . . . Ask Me Y2K! opens at HQ at the Hot Press Hall of Fame on Thurs 25th November for a limited run.