THE CANADIAN adventure had shown Brendan indeed had wings. But like Icarus he’d flown too close to the sun and been badly burned. He’d landed his international book deal and written Sparrow’s Trap. But what to do next? Irish TV station RTÉ came up with an answer.
‘After that major appearance on The Late, Late Show and the success of Mrs Browne’s Boys on radio, RTÉ sent out a command to their producers, “Get O’Carroll into something. Get him in everything.”
‘I could have written my name on a piece of toilet paper and they’d have used it. But, to be honest, television didn’t really appeal to me; my thinking at the time was it didn’t pay that well and it uses up a lot of comedy material. So you have to limit yourself. However, RTÉ kept coming up with ideas over a two-year period, to front Ireland’s Funniest Videos, that sort of thing. But I kept saying no.’
It was only during a trip to London, when Brendan turned up to the opening of Riverdance at the Hammersmith Apollo, that he began to rethink his attitude towards TV.
‘At the break I bumped into the controller of programmes for RTÉ and he said, “Look, Brendan, we’ve offered you almost fifteen programme formats. And you’ve turned them all down.”
‘“Well, I don’t think the time is right to do television.”
‘“The truth of it is, Brendan, RTÉ gave you your first break. In the past two years you’ve been on The Late, Late Show five times. There has to be some payback.”
‘The next day we were gigging in Manchester and I thought, “You know, he’s right. I do owe RTÉ.” So I made the decision that the next thing they offered me, I’d do it. And it wasn’t long. About two months later I was offered a quiz show. I agreed to do it and RTÉ were stunned. And delighted.’
Brendan decided the name of the show would be Hot Milk And Pepper, a reference to the drink he’d once served Margaret Thatcher.
‘We went through the format and it was okay and then I asked what Gerry’s role was. The producer, Gerald Heffernan, looked at me blankly.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? No, you don’t understand. It’s Brendan and Gerry. We’re a team.
‘So they came up with a device whereby Gerry read out the scores and announced the prizes. Gerry was delighted. And the credits for the show would read: Starring Brendan O’Carroll . . . and Gerry Browne.’
Brendan saw Hot Milk And Pepper as an experiment; it wasn’t exciting television and it certainly never played to his strengths, i.e. allowing him to be himself. But it was an opportunity to reach kids and that section of Middle Ireland that might be offended by his stage show. He decided that in the next series he would be looking for more control.
‘The best bits were edited out. I don’t think it was done deliberately. The way it was edited made it very disjointed. But I liked doing it. In for two weeks, twenty-eight shows recorded, take the money and good luck.’
But Brendan was soon able to see the bigger picture. Almost literally. Thanks to The Mammy. The book had gone on to reach the bestseller list in 28 countries. The tale of Agnes Browne – mischievous, irascible and yet warm – was so popular, so universal a character, it would have come as no surprise had the publishers called to announce the book was to be translated into Apache. It was surely only a matter of time till Hollywood came calling.
Meantime, Brendan and Gerry were back touring Ireland with their comedy show (now far softer than The Outrageous Comedy Show), selling out 600-seater theatres. Brendan loved the live audience. This was so much more fun than the routine of the TV quiz show. And he loved to meet the fans and sign autographs at the stage door. Brendan was certainly attracting his share of female attention.
‘Occasionally, a girl would ask you your hotel room number, for sure. But you’d put them off, in a nice way. I certainly didn’t want to spend the night with the girl that wanted to spend the night with me. I wanted to be with the one that didn’t want to be with me. At every gig, there was somebody who was mesmerised by this thing that’s on the stage because, God love them, they don’t have a fulfilled life of their own. They want to be part of your life. Now, I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t look at some young women and think, “God, she’s lovely!” But I wasn’t into a quick bang-bang.’
And of course he had Doreen and three kids at home. But where was Doreen at this point? Life with Brendan had never been easy for her. She’d stood by her man through a whole range of traumas, from The Abbot’s Castle to the financial crash of The Course. She’d watched Brendan climb ladders with book deals, make it onto TV with The Late, Late Show and Hot Milk And Pepper.
But Brendan was away from home a great deal and he was far from the man Doreen had married. He was forging his own path, dealing with the adulation of fans and the like. Although not all of Ireland was in love with him. Comedian Sean Hughes, for example, had made repeated derogatory references to Brendan at a recent Dublin show. But Brendan took the criticism in his stride.
Brendan, it seemed, at forty-one, couldn’t win over the next generation of comedians who appeared in Dublin stand-up clubs such as The Attic and Lillies. Many were critical of the O’Carroll comedy show, claiming it to be old-fashioned, obvious and crude.
But as Brendan says, ‘By this time we had made four videos of the shows, and between them they sold a quarter of a million copies. There couldn’t have been a quarter of a million eejits out there.’
Brendan hoped a TV company would offer drama or sitcom work but, meantime, he had another, bigger idea. At the end of 1996 he began pitching his film script. Sparrow’s Trap had sold well as a novel. It had a cracking storyline. Why wouldn’t it make a great film? And indeed Brendan believed it could launch a series of RTÉ films.
But doesn’t pride always come before a fall?
In Brendan’s case the fall would be spectacular.