“ALL I’ve ever wanted to do is make people laugh,” explains Mrs Brown’s Boys creator, Brendan O’Carroll.
“My dad died when I was nine years old and I remember one night, shortly after, I went downstairs to use the toilet.
“And as I was coming back up I could hear my mother sobbing in the bedroom and I just sat on the stairs listening to her.”
Brendan, who is the youngest of 11 children, recalls how his siblings had emigrated so he felt that he had to be “the man of the house”.
“I remember sitting on the step thinking my job for the rest of my life was to make my mother laugh.
“And then I thought why don’t I try and make everybody’s mother laugh? And here I am.”
Mrs Brown’s Boys has been a huge success for O’Carroll. Starting as a 10-minute radio series in 1992, it made the transition into television in 2011 and has gone on to rack up numerous awards - including five Baftas, four National Television Awards and three TV Choice awards.
However, he admits that the inspiration behind the mischievous matriarch “might not be what people expect”.
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“I did an interview with Gareth O’Callaghan who did an afternoon radio show where he’d invite C-list celebrities on to read some funny stuff out of different magazines,” O’Carroll recalls.
“When I went into do it I must’ve sighed or something because O’Callaghan asked what was wrong and I said, ‘Nothing… it’s just not funny.’
“So he let me do my own thing instead and I went into a spiel where I just talked a lot of nonsense – but it was funny nonsense.”
This led to O’Carroll being offered a regular slot on the programme.
“O’Callaghan was looking for something quirky for the afternoon show and I told him I just happened to be writing a short comedy show for radio and he asked me what it was called.
“Now this is truth: on the way into that interview I was listening to the radio and it was the sixteenth birthday of Louise Brown, the first test tube baby.
“And I was thinking about how many lives that had changed and it was obviously on my mind so when I was asked what it was called I said ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’, just off the top of my head.
“And the rest is pretty much history – people ask me if I’m living my dream but it’s so beyond my dreams it doesn’t feel real.”
O’Carroll is currently preparing to take Agnes and the rest of the clan on the road with Mrs Brown D’Live Show – The Musical for Moore Street.
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“Mrs Brown has had five novels, a hit record, three movies, five stage plays and a TV series so a musical felt like the next step,” he laughs.
In setting the scene O’Carroll describes how developers have moved into the iconic Moore Street, with plans to close down the whole market and replace it with a shopping centre.
However, in typical Mrs Brown fashion, Agnes decides that she’s going to take up the cause to stop this from happening and take these “dastardly developers” to court. The only problem is the community, who rally behind her, are slightly short on funds so they put on a musical to try and raise the money.
“It’s a musical about a musical,” O’Carroll enthuses.
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“Initially I didn’t know what way to do it so I read up on people who had written musicals and what way they operated.
“I tended to prefer the ones who wrote the story first and made the songs fit around it. So that’s what I did, and I have to say, I think they really work.
“I always say I want the audience to leave the theatre with their stomachs sore from laughing. Well they’ll be leaving the theatre with their stomachs sore and their foot tapping.”
Despite his family, who star alongside him in the sitcom, expressing some initial reservations, O’Carroll’s son Danny, who plays Buster on the show, has admitted to him that “this is the best thing you’ve ever written”.
“Even reading through rehearsals Danny kept going, ‘Dad this is a big mistake’, so when we opened in the SSE in Glasgow and he realised people liked it I felt incredibly smug,” he laughs.
Stopping off in Derry, Galway, Killarney, Belfast and Dublin, O’Carroll confesses that he “feels a bit guilty because this is the first Irish tour in 10 years”.
“We were having a conversation and it was Danny who said about coming home and doing an Irish tour and I thought he was absolutely right.
“We’ve done Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK so it feels right to bring Mrs Brown back to Ireland and Northern Ireland.
“And I love performing to Irish crowds, I can’t wait to get at them and the fact we’re coming back on the run up to Christmas also makes it really special for us.”
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O’Carroll believes the nostalgia of the show is part of its charm as it allows people to “have a laugh” away from the “hateful world we’re living in right now.”
“In the years we’ve done Mrs Brown we’ve gone through recessions, bank closures, people’s mortgages going up – all kinds of stuff.
“People are afraid and I think when people get afraid they get nostalgic and I think there’s a nostalgic feel to Mrs Brown that people like.
“I think she’s the kind of mother everybody would like to have because she might be disappointed in you if you killed somebody but she’d help you hide the body.
“And I think she reflects so many other elderly people and not so elderly people who are finding it increasingly difficult to understand the world we’re living in and I think people appreciate that too.
“But more than anything else I think what’s helped us attract and maintain such a loyal audience is the fact we can get people to sit and just laugh and that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Mrs Brown D’Live Show plays: the Millennium Forum, Derry (November 18,19,20 & 21); Leisureland, Galway (November 28,29 & 30); Gleneagle INEC Arena, Killarney (December 5, 6, 7 & 8); SSE Arena Belfast (December 12,13 & 14); and Dublin’s 3Arena (December 20, 21 & 22)
