ST GAYBO’S was full of dead-end kids and no-hope teachers desperate just to get through the day. Brendan was taught by many uninterested supply teachers.
‘We had a teacher once called Mr Muldoon. He made a point of telling me I would always be a loser.’
Regular teachers simply didn’t last too long in an old, worn-out school filled with unruly kids that sucked the energy out of their very being. Brendan, at the time, saw it as the normal way of things. He got on with his life, which at this time involved being a part-time pigeon-fancier.
But the sky suddenly darkened the day Brendan was taken to see his dad in hospital. Gerry O’Carroll’s breathing had worsened.
‘Just as it was time to go my daddy held before me two florins. Four shillings. “Happy Birthday, young man,” he smiled, and I took the shiny coins with the leaping salmon on them.
‘“Thanks, Daddy,” and I meant it. This was big money.
‘“So what will you do with all this money, Brendan?”
‘“I’m going to buy two more pigeons. Tumblers,” I said gleefully. I already had three birds, and I loved keeping pigeons.
‘“Yes, Mammy tells me you have pigeons. Where do you keep them?”
‘“I made a kinda box from two pop-soda wooden crates. I keep them there,” I was proud to say.
‘Daddy leaned down, picked me up in his arms and whispered into my ear, “When I get out of here son, I will make you the best pigeon loft in Finglas.”
‘I was thrilled. My daddy, it was well known to all, was probably the finest cabinet-maker in Dublin. I knew he could make the best loft. I knew it. I floated from the hospital that day.’
Gerard O’Carroll never got the chance. Eight days after he gave Brendan his two shiny coins, he died from asbestos poisoning, contracted on one of the many jobs he’d taken on that had involved working with asbestos sheeting.
‘He died in the same hospital where they took him when he had been shot as a kid.
‘Mammy told me in the best way she could. “Brendan, Daddy is gone to heaven son.” Then, holding me close, she wept. I looked at her with widened eyes.
‘“But, what about my pigeon loft?” I asked.
‘I guess I was sort of used to seeing my father go into hospital. So I didn’t miss him as much as I would have. And I somehow knew life would be all about me and my mammy. I hadn’t had the chance to really get to know my dad. I guess I felt like I was the man of the house now. I was the one responsible for my mammy.
‘And, as strange and as sad a time as it should have been, my abiding memory of the week of the funeral was one of excitement. You see, a lot of my brothers and sisters had emigrated. Now, suddenly, they were all coming home, from Canada, America and England. And I spent the days at the arrivals gate at Dublin Airport. To this day, my favourite place to be is at arrivals in any airport meeting someone. Sometimes, I still pop into arrivals around Christmas time to witness the joy of people reuniting as they emerge from those sliding doors, arms outstretched and engulfing family or friends they have missed and who have missed them. And yes, I cry as I watch.’
It’s not hard to see how Brendan would later come up with a Mrs Brown plot line, set at Christmas time, when Agnes would be beside herself at the thought of her son Trevor arriving home from America.
Meantime, the death of Gerry O’Carroll resulted in a new dynamic in the house. Brendan had always been his mammy’s favourite, the chosen one. But with her husband gone, the focus on her tiny son sharpened.
‘The event changed everything. The day my daddy died, I released the birds. And my mammy spent a bit less time in local politics. I’d get much more of her attention. The attention of a genius.’
Back at school, however, in the summer of 1965, Brendan was in for an entirely unexpected surprise.
‘In my absence, the class had got a new teacher. Not a stand-in, I was told by the lads, but a real, full-time teacher. His name was Billy Flood. As a young man, Billy Flood believed he had a vocation to the Church. He began his journey to train as a Christian Brother but changed his mind. However, he still wanted to teach. I now know that Billy Flood was born to teach. He couldn’t have been more than 21 years old – and looked about 16. I took one look at this baby-faced, horn-rimmed eejit and thought, “He won’t last long” because we were quite an intimidating bunch and had scared off more than a few hopefuls in our time.
‘But here’s the first thing I noticed about him that was different: he wasn’t afraid of us. The second, which puzzled me even more, was that he actually seemed to like us.
‘Now, to the modern-day school kid, the change Billy Flood brought to our classroom will seem petty, but not to us, who had spent our previous school years being beaten senseless, having the Three Rs rammed into us, and in general being despised by the men who were charged with preparing us for life as good citizens.
‘This was not Mr Flood’s way. He taught us to sing. At first we thought he was a queer, the word we used back then for gay. Sing? Us? When he announced this, we laughed. Boy, how we laughed. Then we sang. And he moved from desk to desk, tapping a tuning fork and getting each of us to sing the note. Using this guide, he divided the class into three groups and had us perform first, second and third harmonies.
‘This took an age, for there were some of the lads that wouldn’t do it at first and some who sounded like frogs masturbating. But by one o’clock that afternoon we were singing “Three Blind Mice” in virtually perfect harmony. I didn’t know it then, but at that moment, on that September afternoon, thanks to the enthusiasm of a baby-faced young teacher, my life was about to change.’
Brendan hadn’t had a singing epiphany, or decided to launch himself as a pop star of the future (although he can certainly sing, as those who’ve witnessed his stand-up show will testify).
‘I knew that I could do something different. I didn’t know what it was, nor did I have the words to explain it, but I could feel that I was expressing myself. I knew a group of people together, singing, or whatever, could have a great time. Even in a school classroom.
‘One of the first things Mr Flood did was set up a library, in a Tayto Crisps box. I presume he used his own books from home. Then he put two of the hardest kids in the class in charge of it, so that protected it from miscreants but also gave it kudos. The very first book I took out was Treasure Island. I know today that I’m dyslexic, which explains why it took an age to read it, but I read it – and I loved it. I loved being transported to tiny islands on the high seas. I could feel the ship ploughing through the ocean, taste the salt of the sea water. It was magical. When I was finished, I returned it – well, you had to. It wasn’t like a real library. If you didn’t return it, you didn’t get fined, you got the shit kicked out of you by one of our “librarians” who had three ears between them.
‘I took another book out, but only read a bit of it. I put that one back and got Treasure Island out and read it again and again and again. Over the next three years, I must have taken it out fifteen times, and read it from cover to cover each time.’
Mr Flood had shown Brendan other worlds could exist in the imagination. He introduced him to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Brendan was mesmerised. The youngster realised now the power of invention, of creating wonderful characters and weaving life stories around them.
Brendan discovered this new-found power of storytelling could be utilised in other ways, too. ‘I’d now reached the age where I was doing things I should have been confessing to the priest, so I made things up.’
But of course he never imagined one day he’d make a career out of making up stories.
Mr Flood also instilled the absolute importance of education, ironically something Brendan hadn’t really experienced at home.
‘There was no such thing as free secondary school education back then. If you couldn’t afford to go onto the next level, you stayed in the primary school until you were fourteen and then let out to face the world. But Mr Flood told us one afternoon that Des O’Malley TD was about to change all that, and the only thing we needed to do in three years’ time was to pass an entrance exam. And he added he was determined that as many of us as possible would. And you know, we believed him.’
Meantime, Brendan had to undergo another test. His first kiss.
‘It was with Mardi Deegan, and I adored her. I was still ten, and I remember it was in the middle of winter. I remember it well because I had what used to be called a Number Eleven – two lines of snot running down my nose. Anyway, I took Mardi to The Casino cinema and all the other boys in the village were waiting to see if she would kiss me. Well, she did. And it was a big smack. I remember thinking, “I hope my nose is clean.” But when she pulled away there were two silver spots on her upper lip. I had made my mark. Everyone saw it, but no one told her. Surprisingly enough, she still speaks to me today.’
In the summer of 1966, Brendan visited his sister Maureen in London, and had a great time. But he didn’t realise he’d become too caught up in the occasion.
‘My brother-in-law took me to my first soccer match. It was at Wembley to see Mexico playing England in the World Cup. I nearly got lynched when I came back home to Ireland because everything I was wearing had a Union Jack on it.’
Aged 12 and a half, Brendan took his entrance exam and came second top, all ready to progress to secondary school after his birthday in September. But it seems the combined weight of Robert Louis Stevenson and Billy Flood couldn’t persuade him to carry on with his education.
He was too intent on getting to the next chapter. But he did take the time to write to sister Fiona in Toronto. Fiona had asked Brendan to write to her, but not to write too much because heavy letters were expensive to mail. He took her at her word. She would laugh when she opened the airmail envelope to read just two words, Dear Fiona . . .
Brendan played football now for local club Home Farm, and he remembers a club tour, but not so much for the playing.
‘We were on a trip to Blackpool, and we all went along to see The Sound Of Music. I came out singing all the songs. I’d seen a lot of Western films at The Casino, but for some reason Julie Andrews stuck in my mind.’
Perhaps he was already in close touch with his theatrical side. Not long after, Brendan went to the theatre for the first time, to see a children’s play It’s A Two Foot Six Inches Above The Ground World, at the Gate Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
The play depicted life from a kid’s perspective, with all the children played by adults. Brendan sat with his mouth open as wide as the River Liffey, captivated by the entertainers.
‘It was utter magic. When the curtain went down I told my mother that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I had found myself transported into another world. But it wasn’t just a place where my imagination could fly off to. I realised that the performers up there on stage had this amazing power over someone like me. This was incredible. I wanted some day to have that sort of power over an audience.’
But for the time being, he pushed that dream to the back of his head. Brendan had real life to be getting on with.