Irish comedy Mrs Brown’s Boys is becoming a huge hit in the United States and Brendan O’Carroll finds the prospect “really exciting”.
The Finglas funny man was on Friday’s The Late Late Show alongside fellow Dub Jason Byrne and smiled broadly when asked about the sitcom’s recent surge in popularity on the other side of the Atlantic.
“America’s going very, very well,” he said. “We’ve a tour lined up in 2025 and that’s really exciting. It’s after taking off on Britbox over there and it’s taken off on Showtime.”
And it’s not just the telly that’s doing the business in the USA for O’Carroll and co.
“And you’re possibly doing your own brand of Mrs Brown’s bread?” Patrick Kielty asked.
“Yeah,” Brendan confirms. “Brown bread. We have Mrs Brown sausages at the moment, from Kearns’s. Mrs Brown’s Widow’s Memories. They’re extra large.
“And we have Mrs Brown’s Bread Mix. In America, when you buy Mrs Brown’s Bread mix you get the bread mix, the tin and the recipe. And you put it together, in the oven. And when you take it out, straight away you’re eating Mrs Brown. Bread.”
Brendan also recalled when he worked with Aer Lingus and served former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “when Ireland hosted the EU Presidency,” he noted.
“I didn’t like her – anything she stood for,” he said. “But anyway, she arrived in at the ‘do’ in Áras an Uachtaráin, and I asked her if she wanted a drink. She said, ‘I’ll have a whiskey. I want to order an Irish whiskey.’
“So I got her an Irish whiskey, and when I was giving her the whiskey she said to me, ‘Have you got children?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got two – Fiona and Daniel.’ And she said, ‘Oh, well I guess they’ll miss you for the next four days.’
“Because you’re locked up for the four days,” he explained. “At the end of the four days, Sir Geoffrey Howe was sitting there, he was locked, pissed, and I got her a cup of coffee.
“And just as I walked away she said, ‘I bet Fiona and Danny will be delighted to see you.’ Remembering the waiter’s kids’ names – that was a bit of class. Bitch though,” he added, much to the audience’s amusement.
