‘I was £2.2m in debt’

SO is Brendan O’Carroll finally out of debt, having made a fortune as the monstrous comedy character Mrs Brown in the Nineties and then lost it all and plunged into debt by 2001?

“Trying to make a movie cost me £2.2m and I had £30,000 in the bank at the time, so I had to borrow all around me. Would you believe me if I told you I only paid off the last of the money last March?” says the 55- year-old Dubliner, who is now reeling because his arena tour sold out so fast that extra nights had to be added.

The film he is talking about is the 1998 project, Sparrow’s Trap, which came two years after he had a hit screenplay with Agnes Brown, starring Anjelica Huston in the role which has become O’Carroll’s alterego.

The failure of the follow-up film was a hard lesson for the man who is the youngest of 11 children and had tried every occupation from milkman to disco manager before succeeding on the comedy circuit.

“Thanks to the film, I spent three years in court, not fighting anything, but just so that people could consolidate their debt. I would just go in and say ‘yes, that’s right’ and then I’d make an arrangement to pay it off this way or that way.

“But, do you know, it’s funny because it was a great catalyst for me as well. Sometimes you need a good kick in the backside and what happens to me was I had this fantastic appearance on The Late Late Show (in 1993). The day after that, everyone in Ireland knew my name. I went on a 208-date tour, which was completely sold out and all of a sudden, you start to believe that you are the person on the bloody poster.

“That’s what happened to me. Six or seven months later I started to believe that if I wrote out my shopping list that if I put it on the stage it would be a hit. So I really felt invincible.

It was a hard, expensive lesson for me,” says O’Carroll.

“When I started to make Sparrow’s Trap, I had a fantastic distributor and two days before we started shooting I lost him, which means I lost my funding. Instead of turning up on the set and saying ‘bad news guys, the movie is off’, my pride and stupidity made me feel I couldn’t let everyone down and I’d promised everyone seven weeks work. I just started making the movie without any money.

“We’d shoot from 7am to 7pm and then I’d go out every night to try and raise the money and then I’d go back to shooting. In order to pay it all back, I put my head down and worked like I’d never worked before.

Out of that came Mrs Brown and I toured and toured. I haven’t taken a wage out of the stage show for the last three years, just to get the debts paid off.

“Now everything is paid off and the show is working for me and all of a sudden you put your head up and say ‘we’ve come so far’. It’s been a happy experience and a nightmare which I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”

His grumpy, foul-mouthed widowed, mother of seven came from a radio comedy series and inspired six novels, four films and seven stage plays before BBC1 gambled on the less than wholesome subject becoming a late-night comedy show this year.

Going back to his childhood, he recalls his Labour MP mother, Maureen, telling him he was born, when she was 46, “because he was one more time, for old time’s sake”.

“I found her diary when I was about 14 and I looked at an entry for December 5, 1954, which said ‘must see the doctor today… I’m either pregnant or it’s a growth’. I showed her it and said ‘you said I’m a growth’ and she replied ‘you are and you’re malignant’,” he jokes.

O’Carroll confesses that he’d never thought about donning a dress as Mrs Brown prior to the Nineties.

“I literally fell into it by accident because the actress who was due to play Mrs Brown on the radio series pulled out because she had a kidney infection. I only found out recently that Willy Russell, who wrote Shirley Valentine, had to play the role himself for six weeks because Pauline Collins also got a kidney infection.

Mind you, he’s talented and I’m just getting away with it,” he says.

Initially, O’Carroll wanted to switch back to the original cast, but the editing staff persuaded him to stay on.

“So the whole thing is a big accident,”

O’Carroll jokes.

I congratulate O’Carroll on the success of the TV comedy series, Mrs Brown’s Boys.. “Thank you, it’s unbelievable it really is. People are coming up to me now and saying ‘how are you?’ and I said to a guy in the golf shop yesterday ‘If it gets any better, I’ll be embarrassed’.”

How did the BBC offer him the contract?

“I couldn’t see Mrs Brown transferring to the box, but for years I’d been approached by independent TV companies. The company would then come in and start telling me who would be great in the various parts, but I told them ‘the cast is the cast and if they don’t all travel then we don’t travel’.

“One night in Scotland, the show is over and I’m taking my kit off and I’m told that two guys want to see me. I told the stage door guy I didn’t have time, but he said ‘they’re suits and they look a bit posh’. So then I was intrigued in spite of standing there in my bra and bodysuit.

“Then two Old Etonian-sounding guys are telling me that it’s a wonderful show and chatting away.

Jenny, who is my wife, came down and looked at me with a raised eyebrow and I shrugged.

“They then said ‘terribly sorry we’re from the BBC, would you be interested in developing this as a comedy sitcom’. I said ‘what about the language?’ and one said ‘what language?

That’s just the rhythm of her voice. I’ve been to Ireland and know how they talk’. So he was ticking all the boxes,” O’Carroll says.

But when his wife said the news was exciting, the Irishman scoffed that nobody would walk in off the street and offer a job like that.

“But, I swear to God, he phoned the next week and said that his boss had seen me in Manchester and wanted to commission a pilot script.

I said ‘are you for real?’ and he was.”

The man turned out to be top BBC comedy produce Stephen McCrum, who has commissioned O’Carroll to make a new TV series this year.

􀁧 The cast of both shows features O’Carroll’s real-life wife Jennifer Gibney as Cathy, his daughter Fiona O’Carroll as Maria, his son Danny O’Carroll as Buster, and his sister, Eilish O’Carroll, as Winnie McGoogan.

􀁧 Good Mourning Mrs Brown, MetroRadio Arena, Newcastle, Wednesday-Sunday. 8pm. Tickets: £19.50-£27.50. Box Office: 0844-493- 6666 metroradioarena.co.uk