Brendan O Carroll has made only one new year s resolution. It s the same resolution that he s been making at the dawn of every new year for a decade, and longer. Some day very soon, he s going to withdraw #5,000 from his family s bank account. He s going to take the cash to Las Vegas. And he s going to blow the whole blessed lot in a single night at the stud poker table.
I love a game of stud poker, he simpers, smirking like a house afire at the very thought. I ve been promising myself that I m gonna take this trip to Vegas for yonks now and I m determined to do it. It ll be #5,000 that we can spare, money that s written off or creamed away somewhere. It ll have to be bread that we can afford to lose because that s exactly what s going to happen to it.
The constant, careful plotting of the Vegas blowout is not the indulgence of a celebrity with more money than sense. It is actually a measure of Brendan O Carroll s diligence and self-discipline. From his teenage years, O Carroll has known that he is a gambling addict. He stopped precisely because it had gotten to the point where he didn t want to stop.
I m very aware of the fact that I have an excessive personality, he says. When I gambled, I fucking gambled. I don t gamble at all now. I wouldn t even back a horse on Saint Stephen s Day. I don t do the Lotto. I wouldn t even do the Grand National. I know now I have access to bread and I could fucking blow it all. I genuinely could. When you re gargling, you can only gargle so much and you fucking pass out. I could blow savings, the house, the kids future, all in one fucking day.
Life free of the cardsharks and the tote barracudas has been good, very good. O Carroll is clearly besotted with his wife, Doreen, and their three children. He has also forged a flourishing career which he is determined to push as far as possible. He is wealthy, famous and, in some quarters at least, beloved. From where he currently sits, the world has gone oyster-shaped.
Even though we have a bit of bread now, we re not splurgers, Brendan affirms. Doreen still collects the fucking vouchers off the milk to get free flights to England. I despise drugs. I like a vodka, but not to excess. My only indulgence was that I bought myself a #26,000 car, a Renault Saffron. We also bought a lovely house in Ashbourne.
I have a lovely office in the house but I do my writing in the kitchen. I write between midnight and 4am, with CNN on beside me with no sound. I sit in the kitchen and look around. It s important to have a house like that. It reminds me why I work so fucking hard, and why it is so important that I don t blow it all on a game of stud.
Nevertheless, the gambling goblin continues to gnaw at his brainstem. Hence the proposed windfall for a lucky Vegas dealer later this year.
Every now and again, I need to have a splurge but only very rarely and under controlled conditions, he admits. Twice in the last three years, I said to Doreen, let s go to Shelbourne Park with #200. We d go to blow it. And when we went, we blew it. If you go to the dogs for one day you re gonna blow your bread. You don t know form, you don t the track. I go to blow the money but I get great crack blowing it. Then, that s that. It s over.
When he was an habitual player, Shelbourne Park was the scene of O Carroll s greatest victories, and humiliations.
I was mad into the dogs, he recalls. The 30 second climax they used to call it that s all it takes for the fastest dog to run a race. What happened was that the first three times I went to the dogs, I won big. On the third occasion, I was only 13 years of age. I had five shillings. And I won #815, 18 shillings and six pence on that night. I thought this is fucking easy. Big fucking mistake.
I was hooked and it got worse as I got older. I used to get off the bus at Shelbourne Park on a Saturday night after getting my wages. I d walk across the road to the bus stop where you got a bus back into town. I d lift the sod at the bus stop and put a 50p piece under the sod and leave it there so that, at least, I d have my bus fare when I came out. I knew I was going in to lose my bollocks.
Doreen used to bring me to the pictures on a Sunday night because I d have fuck-all money left. She d go out to the jacks and I d be into her bag, snaring a fiver. Monday night, I d go out to Harold s Cross with that fiver. She told me years later that she left a fiver in her purse, right there for me to get it every fucking Sunday night. She knew fucking well.
The stupidity only slowly became apparent to me. One night, after winning on the sixth and seventh race, I came out with #23. I got onto the bus. On the way home, I was fucking delighted. But I had gone in with #35. Here I was, celebrating losing fucking #12. I went, This is sick! . I stopped that night. My life as a gambler was over.
It s the early hours of a piercingly cold morning in very late December, the kind of night that would glaciate yer wobbly bits and turn your jolly roger into an icicle.
Brendan O Carroll and I are sitting facing each other on twin beds in a groundfloor room in The Arklow Bay Hotel. We are surrounded by hangers bearing a selection of his tasteful scarlet stage suits and stacked cartons of merchandise (books, tapes, videos, CDs, t-shirts, sweatshirts, a full range of O Carrollabilia). Tonight, and for a few hours only, this room has become another bivouac on Brendan s latest extensive safari around Ireland.
Out in the lobby, his right hand honcho, Gerry Browne, and the rest of the O Carroll organisation are readying themselves for the drive to Waterford where they ll set up camp for the next night s show. Brendan s crew are among the most loyal in the business, many of them having been with him since the days when he barely had an arse in his trousers but a full range of arse, fanny and mickey jokes in his act.
The feelings of allegiance are mutual; O Carroll oversees his roadshow like a kindly uncle. He thanks each staff member individually after every performance and takes considerable pains to ensure that everyone on the payroll is happy that their part of the operation is running smoothly, and just plain happy. Input into his material is welcome from all. A copy of each book or play that O Carroll writes is circulated to everyone on his team before it s sent to the publisher, and worthwhile suggestions are conscientiously heeded.
It was in February, 1993, that Brendan O Carroll made the legendary Late Late Show appearance that transformed him into an overnight sensation, or, if you prefer, a nocturnal emission (the O Carroll penchant for double entendre is, I m afraid, infectious). He is now one of the biggest box office draws in the country, and can pack houses in every county, except curiously for Mayo. But we re going to keep going back until we win them over too, Brendan pledges.
O Carroll s three novels (The Mammy, The Chisellers and The Granny) have all been number one bestsellers, and continue to retail strongly. A movie option on The Mammy has been purchased, and Brendan (himself an aspiring film director) is at present working on the fourth draft of the screenplay with Jim Sheridan. We ll probably shoot the 12th draft, states O Carroll. Jim has great enthusiasm for the movie, as I have. He sees things in The Mammy that I didn t see, so it s growing all the time.
By the Summer of this year, Brendan will have completed his fourth novel, Eeny Meeny Miney Mo, an epic tale spanning several generations and incorporating themes such as racism, church oppression and the advantages and disadvantages of being different.
It s gonna be a real door-stopper, he promises.
All things considered, O Carroll is rolling in it. The only reason that he s bothering to tour during what should be his Christmas holidays is that his theatrical career was afforded a severe kick in the orchestra stalls last August. A Canadian production of his debut play, The Course, (a smash hit all over Ireland) stiffed badly, racking up losses of over #50,000. The motivation behind the current tour is to recoup that money, and then some.
I became a comedian because of debts so this is nothing new, he declares after his Arklow gig, lighting up one of the licquorice-flavoured Mores that he chain smokes both on and off stage. Originally, I owed #116,000 and had no job. This time, the company lost #50,000 but it still had an income. It wasn t a major setback. It just meant that I have to do this tour. Work is nothing new to me.
If Arklow is anything to go by, he must already be in the black. The 600-seater venue has been sold out since early evening. Punters (or billies in O Carrollspeak) are still being turned away even after he takes to the boards. Throughout the two hour show, O Carroll has the crowd gorging out of the palm of his hand. Later, when he materialises in the reception area to sign autographs, meet and greet, he is swamped beneath a noisy, adoring scrum, predominantly female. And to think he claims not to have groupies.
I don t, he reiterates. Occasionally, a girl will ask you your hotel room number, fucking sure. But you put them off, in a nice way. I don t want to ride the girl that wants to ride me. I want to ride the girl that doesn t want to ride me. At every gig, there s somebody who s mesmerised by this thing that s on the stage. Because, God love them, they don t have a fucking fulfilled life of their own. They want to be part of your life. You know what s quicker? Come back to your hotel room and have a wank. You don t have to worry about it following you around.
I m not sexually motivated. I m not a man who d ride two tits, a hole and a heartbeat. I d be a liar if I said I didn t look at some young women and think, God, she s lovely! . But I wouldn t be into a quick bang bang. I d prefer to take them to dinner and introduce them to Doreen. I d like Doreen to like them and my kids to like them. I trust women more than I trust men.
If I were homosexual, I could have a homosexual relationship with a man a lot quicker than I could have a one-night relationship with a woman. I have more respect for women than I would have for fellas. Fellas are scummy.
It s almost seven years since I first caught Brendan O Carroll s act. Back then, he was calling himself The Baldy Fella, and was emcee of a Blind Date competition that was staged every Tuesday night in Dublin s Rathmines Inn. The performance was one of the most grotesque I had ever endured.
Both the performer and, to a large extent, the spectators seemed crazed with a sort of obscenity bloodlust. No comment was too foul, no target was too soft. The most grievous offence was that it wasn t in the least amusing. I left feeling that I had to wash my mouth out with soap and water and I had been dumbstruck all evening.
At the time, Damian Corless and I wrote a review which opined: The Baldy Fella wasn t funny in any conventional sense. He wasn t funny in any unconventional sense either. He was just racist, sexist, homophobic and very, very dumb.
Brendan O Carroll has changed a great deal since then. His show in Arklow featured none of the raw sewage that besmirched the floor of The Rathmines Inn. It was, frankly, hilarious, still bluer than a frost-bitten penis of course, but inventive and joyful with it.
There was the occasional bum note (ooo er), but this is probably inevitable given that much of his routine is improvised (O Carroll never writes down any of his material, he just stores it mentally and uses when applicable). The audience also have to accept a degree of responsibility for the lapses; some of the most cringe-inducing moments came during the question n answer portion of the set.
I say whatever comes into my head, O Carroll explains, in defence of his working methods. That s the way I do it. Sometimes, I fuck up. I wrote you and Damian a letter in which I said, I read what you wrote and you were fucking right . A lot of what I was doing back then was OTT. But I m learning and I have learnt. And because I work like that, sometimes I fuck up. When you re caught, you re caught, you put your hand up and admit it.
I m not intelligent enough to edit every word that comes out of my mouth. My own life is passing me by too fast to worry about that. So, I focus on the things that I can do. I can rear my kids, I can keep my house right and I can make sure that the people who have been loyal to me are working. They are my primary objectives. If out of doing that, somebody gets hurt then I hope they come and tell me and I won t do that again, if it s justified. You have to follow your heart. I know that, inside, I am a decent, good guy and I wouldn t deliberately hurt anybody.
The truth is I don t understand sexism. I grew up in a house with six sisters, which was run by a mother who was the only woman socialist elected in 1953, the only woman elected in 1953. She wasn t just fighting a socialist corner, she was fighting a female corner. She was a very strong woman. I didn t know what sexism was in our house.
I don t think that Brendan O Carroll is sexist anymore. He pokes (ooo er) as much fun at male genitalia as at female genitalia. The question is do we really need so many gags about genitalia of any kind? Women love it when I slag men and their willies, he avers. Men think the period jokes are too much but if I d been talking about fucking the women up the arse they d have fallen around the place laughing. I try and strike a balance but I m not a genius. I m not God. I only know what I feel is right and what I feel is wrong, and I can only go by that judgement and by my mother s rearing.
Is it not too easy to get a laugh from some people simply by saying gee or cunt ? Only people of low intelligence will laugh at that. Very few of them have #10 to pay for a ticket. They re not as prevalent as you re indicating that they are. Fuck is not funny in itself, gee is not funny. It s the tone, the context, the gags that make people laugh.
The more intensely the klieg lights of public popularity have popped around Brendan O Carroll, the more intently he has become a whipping boy for the newer generation of Irish comics. Sean Hughes, for instance, made repeated derogatory references to O Carroll during his last Dublin show. Fair play to him, Brendan responds. I didn t expect to get a mention, and I appreciate that. If he made a few bob out of it, go for it, as long as he doesn t offend anybody.
What does Brendan O Carroll make of Sean Hughes as a comedian? He s not funny. I think he s a trier, a great trier. He indulges in real alternative comedy: now he s funny, now he s not, now he s funny, now he s not.
On one recent night in The Attic, in Dublin, three out of the five young comedians on the bill took swipes at Brendan O Carroll and what they saw as his tits , gee , bollocks brand of stand-up. It became a sort of a riff throughout the evening. Brilliant! cackles O Carroll. So, I ve become an institution (claps hands). My mother would be proud.
Doesn t their hostility annoy him?
Not in the least, he guffaws. How can it? I don t see these guys. I don t do the circuit. I ve never been to Lillie s in my life, I ve never been to The POD in my life. I ve never been to Leeson Street in my life. I m not interested in that world. I m interested in feeding my family. I m interested in finding out what I can be. The tits , gee , bollocks element of my show is done in a context that s funny. If it wasn t funny, people wouldn t come. We have had four videos, between them they ve sold a quarter of a million copies. There can t be a quarter of a million fucking eejits out there.
There probably can, Brendan.
No, I don t think so, he retorts. I think some people look at it and see the joke, and laugh at it. How many does The Attic hold? 150? And that s to see a bill of five comedians. Come up to fucking Arklow in front of 600 people and hold them for two hours, and then slag me. I work too fucking hard to worry about what some fucker says in The Attic in front of 150 people. Fuck them!
Working hard gives you muscles for working hard. People are surprised by his industriousness as a writer and performer but Brendan O Carroll was always a tough grafter, back when he used to help sweep up in Moore Street for pocket money, when he moonlighted as a night cleaner in Jeyes in Finglas to earn the price of a decent wedding and when he was a crack waiter for the Department of Foreign Affairs. I take my job personal, he exults. I ll only do it if I can do it right.
It s his days with Foreign Affairs that Brendan remembers most fondly. For a while in the mid 80s, he was Schwarzenwaiter, a Secret Service waiter, on #100 a day, who would be flown in to tend table at lofty state functions and dinners. O Carroll was in charge of champagne and starters when Ronald Reagan came to Ballyporeen. He has served nibblets to the King and Queen of Denmark, and asked the Prince and Princess of Japan if he could freshen their drinks.
During the first E.C. summit in Dublin, he was locked into Dublin Castle for four days and four nights and allowed only one phone call home. His job? Margaret Thatcher s personal waiter.
I looked after Mrs. Thatcher s every need for four days and nights, he boasts. I brought Mrs. Thatcher hot milk and pepper, would you believe? And she was in her dressing gown at the time. It was 4am and she was still at work, papers all over the place.
I d been introduced to her for the first time in Aras An Uachtarain when she arrived: This is Brendan, he will be looking after you during your stay . Oh , she said, so wonderful to meet you. Do you have a wife and family, Brendan? . I told her I was married to Doreen and had two kids then, Daniel and Fiona. Oh, that s lovely, she said. We won t keep you too long away from those . She wanted an Irish whiskey. I got her a Gold Label and she put a drop of water in it.
She always called me Brendan, always very polite, never snappy. On the last day, four days after the introduction, when I brought her out a cup of coffee and Geoffrey Howe a gin and tonic, she said, Well, Brendan, you can go home to Doreen, Fiona and Daniel now . The woman was a fucking pro.
As a good socialist, was he not tempted to add some ground glass to Thatcher s Gold Label?
Absolutely not. The whole ethos of my beliefs is that I m entitled to believe what I m entitled to believe and so is everyone else. We will beat them because we stand back and let them beat themselves. They re already doing it.
Next July, Brendan O Carroll s second play opens in Dublin. It s a comic drama glorying in the dextrously awkward title of Grandad s Sure That Lily s Still Alive. Set in a pensioners rest home, the story revolves around six elderly men who venture off in search of a prostitute that one of them knew 33 years previously.
O Carroll himself will star in the production as one of the OAPs. Reposing his More on the bedside ashtray, he abruptly crumples over, wrinkles up and treats me to an impromptu preview of his performance. Even without make-up, his rendering of a doddery auld codger is uncanny. He grins the grin of the senile and wheezes the wheeze of the chronically bronchial like a natural. Brendan O Carroll has a face which seems to have been born to be geriatric, and instinctively captures both the pathos and the comedy of old age.
You can t have comedy without pathos, he asserts. Comedy in itself is sad. I have to be honest and say that I laugh at dark things. I see an old woman walking down the street and the arse comes out of her shopping bag and I fall around the fucking place laughing. Now, I ll help her pick them up but I think it s so fucking funny. People walking into lampposts, hilarious!
O Carroll s disdain for the Irish theatrical establishment is palpable. He clearly took enormous pleasure in the embarrassment caused to the selection committee of the Dublin Theatre Festival by the success of The Course, a play which they had imperiously rejected. But his scorn for Dublin Luvvieland runs deeper than personal score-settling. He genuinely believes that Irish theatre is in the hands of a cabal of pampered, elitist twits.
The whole theatre scene here is incestuous, Brendan avers. They re in grave danger of vanishing up their own hole. You could straighten it out. If I got on the Arts Council and I was responsible for grant aiding, I could straighten it out. In one fucking year.
Does he want to be on The Arts Council?
Absolutely! I m the fucking man who could straighten out the theatre situation in Ireland. The first thing I d do is abolish grants. I would invest in plays on behalf of the government. There would be unsecured loans. If the play goes down the tubes, we ll take the fall. But don t come back to us next year looking for us to invest. If the play makes a profit, we claw back the profit along with our investment and put that into minority theatre, street theatre, supermarket theatre, an afternoon of Beckett in Bewley s.
If you are Joe Bloggs Theatre Company, we ll invest in two of your projects. If both of them go down the tubes, don t touch us for two years. You re two years banned from applying for investment. That would straighten out the theatre world in one year. Do you know why? They d realise that they need an audience. They don t need an audience now. They ve got the government. But I know that if you entertain people, they will come. They won t come if your idea of theatre is a couple of actors on a stage wanking each other off.
Whatever one thinks of his schtick, it would be idiotic to deny that Brendan O Carroll is a formidable audience puller, one of the few discernible stars in this country s dull and overcast showbiz firmament. And yet, the powers that bedim in RTE have ensured that his only regular presence on our national TV screens is on an insipid Sunday evening gameshow, Brendan O Carroll s Hot Milk And Pepper. The station s timidity and lack of imagination is truly awesome.
I couldn t give a fuck about them, says O Carroll of RTE. A gameshow is the safest thing so, naturally, they go for it. RTE s business is their own business. If that s the way they want to run their show, let them. I m not a crusader about anything in the business. There are things I don t like. There are things that I will stand up and shout and roar about. But, certainly, one of them wouldn t be RTE. What s the point?
After the first Late Late Show, the Brendan O Carroll vibe exploded, and RTE were all over me. If I wrote my name on a piece of toilet paper, it was to be looked at and examined to see if they could do anything with it. There were people in RTE repeating my name like a mantra: Brendan O Carroll, Brendan O Carroll, Brendan O Carroll, We must do something with Brendan O Carroll. They came with a few suggestions. A light entertainment show. A variety show. Would you like to write this? Would you like to present that. I said no to all of it.
There s very few people making big bread out of television in this country. Kenny and Gay Byrne, that would be about it. There are no other big high flyers, moneywise. You wouldn t be doing TV for money, so why do it? The reason I do TV is to sell something. That s the honest to God s truth. The only reason I d go on TV is to get more people into the gigs. We couldn t physically get any more people into the gigs than were coming. TV was pointless.
O Carroll s ears pricked up briefly when a joint production between Carlton TV and RTE was mooted. But the project quickly collapsed when the budgetary chasm between the two station s concepts became apparent (RTE felt the whole series, 12 shows, could be made for #250,000 while Carlton were thinking in terms of #210,000 per show).
RTE nearly fell off the fucking ceiling, Brendan titters. They don t have that, they literally don t have that. And they don t have the creativity to make up for the lack of money by being resourceful. There are some really good, enthusiastic, creative people in there but it s just beaten out of them. It s very, very hard to create in an institution like that. RTE don t have the money or the resources to make something like Father Ted. They could do Father Ted but cheaper, and you d end up with Extra Extra.
What does Brendan O Carroll make of Father Ted?
I think it s hilarious, he states. There are times when I think, Okay lads, you ve whipped the joke to death now, bury it and move onto the next one . Of course I m gonna be critical because I m a comedian and, I hope, a bit of a director. But fuck, it s a great idea. It s a bit OTT but it s deliberately OTT. I think it s very, very funny.
O Carroll regards Hot Milk And Pepper as merely a foray into television, an opportunity to reach children and that swathe of Middle Ireland which might be offended by his stage show. He will do another series but, next time, he ll be looking for more control.
The best bits were edited out, he contends. I don t think it was done deliberately. The way it was edited made it very disjointed, non-continuous. But I liked doing it. In for two weeks, 28 shows recorded, thank you. Good luck.
Eventually, Brendan maintains, there will come a moment when he feels he wants to conquer TV, with either a sit-com or a drama serial. When that happens, it is probably inevitable that it will be with the help of a British television channel. At present, his communications with Montrose are focused on trying to interest them in his movie script, Sparrow s Trap, which he believes would be the ideal vehicle with which to launch a series of RTE films. Thus far, it has proved a painfully hard sell.
RTE are afraid of stars, O Carroll claims. They re afraid of their fucking bollocks. They don t want anyone to become bigger than the fucking station itself. That would be a tragedy to them. I heard a very prominent member of RTE slamming his fucking fist on a table beside where I was sitting and saying, This station owes Gay Byrne fuck all . Anybody who can say that is a fucking fool. He carried the fucking station on his back for many, many years. Maybe not now, but certainly for the first 20 years.
If I need to, I ll come heavy on RTE. I don t need TV that bad yet, thank God. I never want to owe RTE. I could never owe them because I always give value. I m sure they think that I should be in their debt: Come on now, you got your break on The Late Late Show, The Late Late Show made you . Yeah, did you see that show? Who else was on it? How come RTE didn t make them as well? I made me.
Gaybo appears to be one of Brendan O Carroll s biggest fans does this mean that the pair of them are now regular drinking buddies? I have never met Gay outside of RTE apart from being on the show, insists Brendan. I love the fucking man. He s been so good to me. But no, we ve never met socially.
Two years ago, Brendan O Carroll told Hot Press that he intended entering politics in or around the year 2,000. He stands over that declaration, and says he will put himself forward in the Finglas area (where he still owns a house) for election to the Dail within five years. In 1995, he was contemplating nailing his colours to the Democratic Left ticket. Now, however, he is adamant that he will be an independent socialist candidate.
I had tremendous respect for Democratic Left and Proinsias De Rossa in particular, and the work he s done on the ground in his own constituency, Brendan explains. He had given the people that little bit of hope. He really did raise their expectations. But I think he s swimming with the sharks now. One would ask why he s a Minister at all? One would ask why he s in government? Maybe they thought they could be power brokers. They re not, not by any stretch of the imagination. They re treating some of the pimples but the big party is cracking the whip, and is inflicting wounds, big time wounds.
Democratic Left was set up, as Labour was set up, to be in opposition. They re there to do the checks and balances. If you have to fall in line behind the biggest party whip then what s the fucking point? They might as well join that party.
If elected, what is the first thing that Brendan O Carroll TD would do? The first thing myself and Tony Gregory would do is hold the balance of power and use it, he forecasts. Then, we would tackle real drugs issues, real crime issues. The problem is not getting the kids off the drugs, the problem is filling their day. The beauty of being a drug addict is you wake up in the morning and your whole day is filled, snaring the money to get your fix. Ever day that you shoot up is an achievement.
You ve achieved. You ve got something that you can see and hold in your hand. That is not a dishonourable fucking quest. It s dreadful that it involves drugs but it s not dishonourable. Every one of us gets up in the morning and hopes that, by the end of the day, we achieve. What we need to do is give them something to achieve. There is an army of people out there willing to put this country right. There s nobody who doesn t want to make a contribution, even the guy shooting up.
I would use my vote to force the government to set up a civil maintenance brigade, numbering 50,000 off the unemployment register. Their job would be to keep the country looking good from top to bottom, even down to having stormtroopers. Potholes in Cavan? The stormtroopers are in; bang, bang, bang, potholes filled!
All these people want is a week s wages and to achieve every day. That can be provided and I d love to fucking start a civil maintenance brigade.
Save your stamp. This is not a wind up. Brendan O Carroll is deadly serious when he talks about his Dail Eireann ambitions. He is in equal earnest when he pledges that, assuming he achieves his aims after one term as a TD, he will seek election to the European Parliament.
Anyone who doubts his prospects at the ballot box knows little about the determination of Brendan O Carroll and even less about the disenchantment of the electorate with politics du jour.
I will do it, he proclaims. If they can have a fucking poxy actor as President of America, I don t think it s at all implausible. I d love to move over to Europe as an MEP. If we get a federation, fucking certainly. Europe gets things done. At the moment, you ve all the kids at the party, all supporting different teams. If we get a federation, you re looking at a whole different Europe altogether. A peaceful Europe, aggressively peaceful. You re also looking at a greater chance of socialism prevailing. We haven t experienced socialism in this country, ever.
At the moment, I m trying to work to get enough money to not have to work. At the stage I go into politics, I will probably not have to work. John F. Kennedy didn t need the Presidency. I was talking to Courtney Kennedy and she tells me that the Kennedy family, to this day, get a dollar on every bottle of spirits imported into the United States of America. It goes back to something they organised in the 1920s. John F. Kennedy didn t need bread. He just took a dollar a year for the Presidency.
He wanted to make a contribution, plus he wanted to get his leg over. Several times a day. But he wanted to make a contribution and, fuck me, he did. He didn t need the bread so why should we only vote for TDs who need the bread in Ireland? In fact, the TDs who are in there for the bread are fucking dangerous.
I was always respectable, he chirps, chomping on yet another More. Sometimes, to get people s attention, you have to grab them by the balls. Then, when you have them by the balls, you can just massage their nipples and the rest will be fine. You don t necessarily have to fucking squeeze them.
The Outrageous Comedy Show got people s attention. Anybody who, for a moment, thought that that was me on the stage was wrong, but if they believed it was me then I was doing my job really fucking well. That s not me in The Outrageous Comedy Show. Me, I m a waiter. I m a father. I m a husband. I m Victorian in my own way. I ve got my Victorian values.
Like what? Never saying gee with your mouth full?
No, listen, I ve got a 16-year-old daughter and I wouldn t let her do a lot of things that other people might, Brendan attests. I correct my kids if they swear. Particularly because they re my kids. My own kids are aware that, of all the kids in their school, they re the ones that can t swear. Because that s what s expected of them, being the children of Brendan O Carroll. I ve told them this and they know. I tell them, If you don t swear, then you get impact .
Manners are very important to me. That comes from my own upbringing. Manners were very important to my Mum. I could fucking murder six nuns, but if I said please and thank you and opened the gate for them when they were coming in, my mother would forgive me anything. Basic manners cost nothing, but effort.
At home with Doreen, I ll be really prudish about sex. I wouldn t even like discussing sex. I could make mad passionate love to Doreen; I d come down the next morning to have breakfast, I wouldn t be one to wink and go, Good night last night, wasn t it, love? I wouldn t refer to it all. I wouldn t want to talk about it the next morning. Really, honest to God, that s the way I am.
He ll be telling us he s a committed Christian next. Eh, actually, he will.
I ve got a great devotion to Jesus, he expounds. A lot of people might be surprised to hear that. I ve always had. I ve had too many good things happen to me asked for too many things and received them not to have it. I m not a devotee of the church, I m not a devotee of any organised religion. I was christened a Catholic but I m certainly not a supporter of the fucking Catholic Church. The closer you are to any organised religion, the further you are from God. I have a good one-to-one relationship with Jesus, which I ve had since the time I was a kid.
I ve always tried to love my neighbour, which is the one Christian law that counts. If you hang onto that one, everything else will be fine. I don t go to mass at all. But every time I hug my child, that s a prayer.
What about, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain ? Great idea, smirks O Carroll. Which God are we talking about? Jesus? Or, Jaysus? Most people who use the word Jaysus use it as a term of hope or a term of despair. If anybody who is in despair calls on Jesus, I think that s good, regardless of the situation.
But isn t it a sin for a comedian to blaspheme onstage? Absolutely not. Jesus can do with all the advertising he can get. And I m happy to include Him in my gig. Just as Sean Hughes is happy to include me in his gig.
Does Brendan O Carroll believe that Jesus thinks his act is funny?
Hilarious, he concludes. Absolutely hilarious. He d piss Himself laughing, piss Himself. I betcha if I d been around, He d have booked me for the Last Supper. n
Brendan O Carroll takes his one-man show The Story So Far to Dublin s Olympia from Monday 27th January to Saturday 1st February.