Brendan O'Carroll: Forever 'Young'
IT IS the day after St. Patrick's Day and Brendan O'Carroll, Ireland's most famous comedian, is tired and glum as he sits in the dining room at the Fitzpatrick Manhattan Hotel. He had sidestepped the hotel's raucous party the night before, but stayed up late.
"I stayed up watching the news on Iraq," said O'Carroll of his worries, just before the war began. "This Bush has no foreign policy knowledge."
O'Carroll had been in the States for two weeks on a nationwide, 11-city and 70-bookstore tour of America for his fourth Agnes Browne novel, "The Young Wan" (Viking/$24.95).
Agnes Browne is the resilient widow with seven children who has spawned a radio show, novels and stage plays. She will soon star in her own TV show. The 46-year-old O'Carroll used a big chunk of his own childhood story of growing up poor in North Dublin to create Agnes Browne.
With a cappuccino in front of him from the Russian waitress, Browne was ready to talk about the new book. Suddenly, the interview was interrupted by Bill Cullen, the Irish businessman and author of It's a Long Way From Penny Apples, his own story of growing up poor in North Dublin, and working
in the markets of Moore Street.
"Five thousand copies of my book sold out last night on QVC in two minutes," boasted Cullen of the shopping channel. "That's $100,000 in two minutes."
" I have five books of my own," said a mock indignant O'Carroll. "Can't you see I am being interviewed?"
Was it a tense moment? Were they going to challenge each other on whose childhood was more bleak? Was a fistfight going to break out? No, the men
shook hands and Cullen went off to sell more books.
O'CARROLL'S third U.S. book tour has been a big success. O'Carroll has been reading to packed crowds on the East and West Coasts and the book has been doing great.
"The independent bookstores have been hand-selling Agnes Browne," he said.
The tour, however, has not been without peril. "I was having a drink before a reading in Sonoma, California," said O'Carroll, as he pepped up over his second cappuccino. "This old guy comes up to me." He moved into a hillbilly
accent: "You got nice teeth, boy, like a woman," he said.
The terrified comedian, a father of three, ran away from his potential suitor. "If you had a banjo, you'd have a movie," O'Carroll said, referring to the film Deliverance.
The Young Wan, which is slang for a wild girl, is actually a "prequel" to the Agnes Browne series, focusing on Agnes' friendship with the scrappy Marion, when they meet at the age of five. Even after the success of The
Mammy and The Chiselers, O'Carroll tried to kill the series in his book The Granny. "I didn't want to write Agnes Browne books forever," he said. "What people liked was the relationship between Marion and Agnes," said O'Carroll. "My editor asked me to explore their friendship."
The Young Wan returns to the fictional North Dublin area of The Jarro, where the readers meet Agnes' parents - a labor organizer named Bosco and a West Briton factory owner's daughter named Connie. The book goes through the Black-and-Tan brutality, and labor violence kills Agnes' father, forcing her to find work as a teen in the vegetable markets of Moore Street.
O'Carroll created The Jarro from a number of North Dublin neighborhoods, including Summer-hill and Stoneybatter. "I wanted all the action to happen in a small area," he explained. "American tourists show up looking for The Jarro," he giggled. "Dubliners can't say `I don't know,' so they send them
along."
Agnes Browne has become her own cottage industry with the film by Anjelica Huston and the upcoming TV shows. This widow with seven children "supports 40 people," said O'Carroll. "This staff supports the books, plays, etc."
The waitress came over with O'Carroll's third cappuccino. "You know, she is from the Russian neighborhood in Finglas," he cracked.
O'Carroll's own mother was much different than Agnes.
"She was a nun turned into a schoolteacher," said O'Carroll. The late Maureen O'Carroll was a socialist member of the Dail (Irish Parliament). "She was a TD, but we lived in a two-bedroom council flat with 11 children.
I gave Agnes my mother's sense of social justice," he said. "Agnes is also very wise. The major difference between her and my mother was the education."
Though things were tight with 11 kids, O'Carroll never knew he was poor.
"We did okay," he said. "I was never hungry. We thought we were rich. We just didn't have the money."
O'Carroll left school without his mother's knowledge right before his 13th birthday. "I started working in the departures bar of Dublin airport, as a trainee barman," he said. He worked as a waiter, then ran a pub with a partner.
Eventually his partner stole all the money and sold the furniture. Broke and with a wife and then-two kids to feed, O'Carroll took a comedy gig, and wound up getting paid 10 quid for his efforts. In a matter of weeks, he claimed he was making 750 pounds a night.
O'Carroll created the radio show Mrs. Browne's Boys on 2FM in the early 1990s. "That was where everything - the books, the movie, the plays, came from." The seven-minute shows ran for two years, and O'Carroll played Mrs. Browne. The shows were so popular that Irish prisoners asked to be locked in their prison cells so they could listen to the shows on their radios.
His career exploded when he appeared on the Late Late Show with Gay Byrne in 1992. O'Carroll tricked Byrne out of his seat.
(Brendan O'Carroll as the foul-mouthed Mrs. Browne)
"My first question for him was, `So Gay, how is your mickey?'" said O'Carroll. A star was born.
O'Carroll, who can command $10,000 a performance, travels with an entourage, but it is not full of your normal groupies. As evidence of this, his 10-year-old son Eric wandered into the dining room, looking for breakfast.
"My publisher Viking wanted to know why I needed 11 hotel rooms in New York," he said. "They are for my family and friends," a group which also includes his two adult children and his girlfriend, the actress Jenny Gibney.
O'CARROLL'S new project is his third Agnes Browne stage play, Mrs. Browne Rides Again, where he again plays Mrs. Browne.
"We have been playing to sold out shows in Edinburgh and we'll be in Liverpool next," he said.
In the spring, O'Carroll and his production company will start taping the Agnes Browne TV show, where he will also play the famed widow.
He gleefully shows off pictures of himself dressed up as a working-class matron with moles on his face. When asked if he has to shave off his mustache to play Agnes Browne, O'Carroll said, "I play Mrs. Browne without the mustache. If I keep the mustache, I look too much like my mother."
"My first question for him was, `So Gay, how is your mickey?'" said O'Carroll. A star was born.
O'Carroll, who can command $10,000 a performance, travels with an entourage, but it is not full of your normal groupies. As evidence of this, his 10-year-old son Eric wandered into the dining room, looking for breakfast.
"My publisher Viking wanted to know why I needed 11 hotel rooms in New York," he said. "They are for my family and friends," a group which also includes his two adult children and his girlfriend, the actress Jenny Gibney.
O'CARROLL'S new project is his third Agnes Browne stage play, Mrs. Browne Rides Again, where he again plays Mrs. Browne.
"We have been playing to sold out shows in Edinburgh and we'll be in Liverpool next," he said.
In the spring, O'Carroll and his production company will start taping the Agnes Browne TV show, where he will also play the famed widow.
He gleefully shows off pictures of himself dressed up as a working-class matron with moles on his face. When asked if he has to shave off his mustache to play Agnes Browne, O'Carroll said, "I play Mrs. Browne without the mustache. If I keep the mustache, I look too much like my mother."
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