Perth Arena will be filled for the next three nights with fans of the TV show Mrs Brown’s Boys, creator Brendan O’Carroll chatted with us this morning ahead of the performances.

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O’Carroll first came up with the popular character in 1992 when he created a short 5-minute radio comedy. Soon the character of Mrs Browne (she originally had an ‘e’ on her name) was expanded out into a series of novels.

Her first foray onto screen was a in feature film Agnes Browne, with Angelica Houston playing the role. The film was an adaptation of O’Carroll’s book The Mammy. 

The author went on to write several more novels, before he began to play the role himself in a series of DVD productions and stage plays. Soon the BBC came knocking and turned the show into a hit TV series, and while critics didn’t praise the show, audiences loved it.

The show is a family filled production. While O’Carroll takes on the lead role, his wife actress Jennifer Gibney plays daughter Cathy, O’Carroll’s daughter Fiona plays on-screen daughter in law Maria, while his son Danny plays lad about town Buster Brady. Next door neighbour Winnie McGoogan is played by his sister, Eilish O’Carroll.

Ahead of tonight’s show at the Perth Arena, Bendan O’Carroll had a quick chat with OUTinPerth.

Is Mrs Brown universal? Are there women like this all over the world? 

When I started writing the Mrs Brown novels, some of it took my breath away a bit. It was the number one seller in Bosnia during the war there, it went into the Top 10 in China, it went into the Top 10 in India.

I was getting letters from all over the world with people saying “I know a woman, who lives just down the road, who is just like this.”, or “my aunt was just like this”, or “my Granny was just like this.”

It turns out there is that universal mother, everyone knows someone a bit like this, you know – that aunt who everyone’s afraid to invite to a wedding because you know once she has one or two glasses of wine she’s going to be up on the table waving her knickers around.

Everyone knows somebody like that, so it turns out she’s very familiar. She’s one of those characters that once she comes on to the stage you’re going “I know her.”

Where did the very first spark for Mrs Brown come from?

The very first spark I think was years ago. I was working at a place called The Grasshopper Inn in Clonee in Dublin.

It was race day, the weekend races were on which is a big day in the restaurant. I’d one to the bathroom and I was in one of the cubicles. While I was in the cubicle two guys came in and were using the urinals.

They were chatting away to each other and saying ‘That horse he was shit, he was a fucking this, and a fucking that!’

Sitting in the cubicle I just said (in Mrs Brown’s voice) “Now, now gentleman that’s no way to be talking”.

They went silent and then said, “I’m sorry Missus, I think you’re in the wrong bathroom.”

I replied, ” I think you’re in the wrong bathroom, now get out of here.”

They left.

I thought, “Oh God, that woman’s voice is authentic”, so when we came to do Mrs Brown it was a fairly easy role to slip into.

How do you nail the Mrs Brown fashion look? Is it all about getting a good cardigan?

I think you’re being very fucking generous calling it fashion.

It’s sort of based on my mother. In her latter years she always had the cardigan, and she had one that she worn in the nighttime which she called her ‘bed jacket’.

She always had that cardy, she always had the apron on, and she always carried the tea towel around the house, no matter what she was doing.

The tea towel was like her tool box, she used it to open bottles, she used it to swat flies, she used it to beat us, she used it to take stuff out of the oven. It was like a Swiss knife.

I was surprised to find that this story was also made into a dramatic film in 1999. 

Yes, that’s right Angelica Houston played Agnes Brown. It was based on the very first book The Mammy.

I think I just got lucky. The Mammy came out and was very successful, Thank God, it bought me my first house.

When it came out it was the same time that Angela’s Ashes came out and there were two producers who both went after Angela’s Ashes to make a movie of it. They were kind of out bidding each other, the one that lost came and made The Mammy.

I was lucky that they came looking, the critics had described it as “Angela’s Ashes on speed.”

You recently turned down the chance to have the show shown in Russia, because they wanted to remove the character of Rory, Mrs Brown’s gay son.

Yes, they wanted to take out Rory, and all the gay characters.

How do they even go about doing that, is it when it’s dubbed into Russian?

Well somebody said to me, “How very supportive of the gay community”, and I have to say to be honest with you, it wasn’t fucking that. If they’d have said they were taking out the women I would have said no, because the show’s the show. You either take it as it is or fuck off.

It certainly showed me the heightened sense of homophobia, well certainly in the ruling classes of Russia. It’s not like that among the common people.

When I first wrote Mrs Brown back in 1992 for the radio and Rory on, back then you have to remember that it was illegal to be gay in Ireland.

At the time I was surprised that the radio station let it go, but I’ve always said, “Look. He is who he is, and I’m not sorry.”

Rory is that gay son that every mother now wants. Nowadays its got to the stage where if a couple doesn’t have a gay son they’re so disappointed.

It’s a big journey from a five minute radio spot to doing arena tours, how do you reflect back o that?

It sure is, and I wish to God that I could tell you a lie and say I had a grand plan, but I didn’t. Honest to God, it just took on its own momentum.

It’s like that thing they say about space, if you were on a spacewalk and flipped a coin toward Mars, by the time it passes Mars it’ll be going at two times the speed of sound.

My mother had a great saying for it, she’d say “Success is like disco music, don’t analyse it, just fucking dance to it.”

I’ve been dancing now for the last twenty years.

What’s the secret to working with your family, most of us can’t make it though dinner.

Well working with them is easier than having dinner with them.

I think the secret is that no matter what happens, and let’s be clear – we’re not the fucking Waltons. But no matter what happens we’re all pulling for the one thing at the end of the day.

If there’s a bit of nagging during the day, once you go on stage you’ve got to pull it together to deliver a show that is going to be great.

By the time you come off stage you look at each other and say “What the hell were we arguing about,” and you hug it out.

Mrs Brown’s Boys ‘For the Love of Mrs. Brown’ is on at the Perth Arena from Thursday to Saturday, with two performances on Saturday. Get tickets from Ticketek. 

Graeme Watson