A lifetime of laughter

LAST month one of the most famous faces ever to come out of Finglas was presented with a Lifetime Achievement at the IFTA Gala Television Awards – and it was richly deserved.

Brendan O’Carroll is something of a showbiz Lazarus. Having first tasted success in the early ‘90s as a stand-up comedian, his initial rise to fame ended in bankruptcy rather than fortune.

Written off by sections of mainstream media, O’Carroll was expected to fade into obscurity and when he continued with his most famous character, Agnes Brown, many critics described the Finglas funny-man as flogging a dead horse.

However, there was plenty of life left in Mrs Brown and sell-out stage shows in the UK led to a television sitcom that’s taken two nations by storm, and given O’Carroll a hard-earned second chance.

In fact the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Specials are now as much a festive tradition as turkey and ham.

“It’s hard to believe that a boy from Finglas has dominated the UK’s biggest TV night of the year every year,” says broadcaster Joe Duffy.

“It’s an incredible achievement.”

O’Carroll was born in 1955 in Finglas, the youngest of 11 children by Maureen, a Labour TD, and Gerard, a carpenter. Despite his mother’s political career, the family experienced much poverty and O’Carroll left school aged 12 to start work.

The young O’Carroll had a string of jobs, including a waiter and milkman but it was comedy that eventually captured his attention.  Fascinated by Irish comedian Hal Roach, O’Carroll fastidiously studied his comedy stand-up routines and eventually got a job working for comic Brendan Grace as his personal assistant.

A big career turning point came with his first appearance on Gay Byrne’s ‘Late Late Show’ in 1992 and he became a popular regular guest. 

Around the same time he created Agnes Browne who made her first appearance on RTÉ’s 2FM radio station and was soon topping the ratings charts.

A bestselling book followed and by the end of the decade the Agnes Browne movie, directed by and starring Oscar winner Angelica Huston, hit the big screen.

“Brendan O’Carroll is a born storyteller and a cross between Robin Williams and Billy Connelly,” Huston said.

However, behind the success O’Carroll was struggling financially. An ill-fated movie venture and the surprise closure of a jointly owned pub eventually ended in bankruptcy but he dug deep, found an inner-strength and kept believing in himself.

UK television roles in the 2000’s included Max and Paddy’s Road To Nowhere, which co-starred Peter Kay and Paddy McGuinness. He also had roles in television movies The Fattest Man in Britain (2009) and The Security Men (2013), both of which were written by popular comic writers Jeff Pope and Caroline Aherne.

It was around this time that O’Carroll’s various theatre productions featuring Agnes Brown were starting to garner attention from television producers in the UK and in 2011 his plays were adapted into a BBC television sitcom.

Initially broadcast on a quiet late evening slot, Mrs Brown’s Boys became a huge word-of-mouth hit, and quickly moved to prime time. Created by and starring O’Carroll in the lead role, Mrs Brown’s Boys also features his wife Jennifer Gibney, sister Eilish, son Danny and daughter Fiona, and the show’s first series eventually pulled in an average audience of around 3.6 million people.

The show found similar success in Ireland when it was broadcast by RTÉ. Every episode aired won its timeslot for RTÉ, with an average viewership of 753,500.

The show went from strength to strength and by 2013, the third season was attracting a massive average audience of 9.4 million people in the UK.

The success of Mrs Brown’s Boys TV series is not just limited to the UK and Ireland. It has now aired in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Malta, New Zealand, Serbia, Sweden and Africa.

In the UK, Universal have sold over four million units of all the various Mrs Brown’s Boys TV DVDs to date.

The Mrs Brown’s Boys D’ Movie made a record breaking €1.02 million at the Irish box office after its first three days on release, and proved a hit with audiences worldwide too as it went on to make $28,840,379, and all from a budget of just £3.6 million.

The awards just keep coming too. The show has won a BAFTA Award for Best Situation Comedy, an IFTA Award for Best Television Programme, a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Comedy Entertainment Programme as well as a Writers Guild Of Great Britain British Comedy Award, among many other accolades.

Last month O’Carroll was joined by family, friends and colleagues from the world of comedy and television in Dublin to receive his IFTA Lifetime Achievement Award.

Not bad for a local lad from Finglas.