Comedy Gold: In the December issue of RSVP, the Mrs. Brown’s Boys star opened up about feeling lucky in life, moving through the decades and the serious side to his TV show

You can’t fake charisma, and Mrs. Brown’s Boys star and creator Brendan O’Carroll has it in spades. His hit comedy show often divides opinion, but he is completely unfazed because, for him, life has been a privilege. He tells RSVP, “Someone said to me that I must be living my dreams, I’m so far past living my dreams I can’t remember what they were.” 2024 has been a big year for him personally and professionally with a sell-out tour and another NTA win, but 2025 will be even bigger as he turns 70 and marks 20 years of marriage to his wife and co-star Jenny Gibney. Here, in an exclusive interview, Brendan opens up about getting married for the second time and what makes their relationship work. He also reflects on his life so far and reveals the festive plans for the O’Carroll family.

Anyone in the film and TV business will tell you that when you’re doing it in front of a live audience in a theatre, there’s nothing that matches it. Absolutely nothing. It’s a phenomenal feeling. We’re playing Belfast and Dublin this month. When you hear 8,500 people laughing at the same time, your clothes begin to vibrate.

I only finished writing them at the beginning of October. Cathy decides to feed the world on Christmas Day. She is distraught about the number of homeless people who aren’t going to have a Christmas this year, so she tries to organise some way of feeding them. In the meantime, Agnes says there’s no need for people to be homeless, all they need to do is go and get a flat. She doesn’t get how bad the homelessness crisis is. Winnie convinces her to go on a weekend away to take a break, but she doesn’t want to go because it’s too close to Christmas. We end up with a lovely piece of music at the end. Normally, we end with a sing-song but this year it ends with a track called Under Grafton Street Lights. Then Mrs. Brown gets a bit of a shock at New Year’s. She decides to let out Rory’s bedroom as a B&B and she ends up with a very peculiar stranger in the house. It leads to all kinds of mayhem.

I think comedy needs to touch the edge of reality, but the whole idea of comedy is to take people away from reality. Our job is to bring people into a dark theatre for two hours and make them laugh. We need to get them to forget about the outside world and whatever they’re worried about. We want them to have a laugh, and I think we do our job well.

RTÉ is in a precarious situation at the moment and the production of Fair City and The Late Late Show will be outsourced soon. Mrs. Brown’s Boys is co-produced by RTÉ and BBC, do you worry the TV show won’t come back due to cost-cutting?

When we started Mrs. Brown’s Boys on TV, I told the BBC I wanted RTÉ involved. Their attitude was that they didn’t need RTÉ for budgets. But it was important to me that they were involved and we had a simultaneous broadcast. I feel sorry for RTÉ because we want it to be the same as the BBC even though we have a smaller population and a lot less people paying tax. We want our TV shows to be the same, our roads to be the same and our lights to be the same, but they can’t do that. If you compare what RTÉ and the BBC spend each year, RTÉ is doing a phenomenal job. Everyone says, ‘RTÉ lost Father Ted’ or ‘RTÉ lost Ballykissangel’ – RTÉ didn’t lose them, RTÉ couldn’t afford to produce them. In our case, I’m delighted we brought them on board because the perception for a lot of people is that Mrs. Brown’s Boys is an RTÉ show being shown on BBC, not a BBC show being shown on RTÉ.

You and your wife Jenny Gibney will celebrate 20 years of marriage next year. What, for you, is the secret to your marriage and your working relationship?

We’re not The Waltons, that’s for sure, but that never comes on stage. I work alongside Jenny, my sister, my son and daughter, Jenny’s sister, and my other son directs the live show. Even if Jenny and I have a fight, which we don’t anymore because we’re too old, we look at each other and say, ‘You’re going nowhere, I’m going nowhere, what are we doing?’ The show has
been very helpful in that if there’s something going on between me and Jenny, me and the kids or Jenny and the kids, you go on stage and you don’t bring it with you. You get to be different characters. Then you come off stage that night and say, ‘What are we doing? What are we arguing about?’ It has helped to heal a lot.

Is your marriage to Jenny and your relationship on screen just one circle? Do they go hand-in-hand?

The good thing about us is that we didn’t plan anything. We didn’t plan any of it. My mother used to have a great saying, ‘It’s like disco music, don’t analyse it, just go with it’. That’s what we’ve been doing, we’ve just been dancing. When we met and started dating, we both said we’d never get married again. I was in the middle of writing a show and I got to bed at 5am. I looked over and thought that I wouldn’t like her to not be there anymore. I knew there was a way of making her legally obliged to be there, so I proposed to her. She said yes and here we are 20 years later. The last 20 years have been great.

Is marriage different the second time around because you’re older and you’ve more knowledge?

I was very young when I got married the first time. People are 30 to 35 when they get married these days, why weren’t we that sensible? I played with a football team and you were at a wedding every three or four months when all the lads got married. Then it became my turn and I was next. I didn’t think about what the marriage was going to be like in 10 or 20 years, I just got married. You don’t discuss if your dreams are going to match their dreams. If your dreams don’t match each other, you shouldn’t get married. You’re very naive the first time. But I wouldn’t change anything, I’ve four fantastic kids who brought great happiness to me. The second time around is a different ballgame. Do you see yourself sitting by the fire with this person when you’re 90 years of age? You don’t think about that when you’re 19. You think about that when you’re 49, as I was when I got married again. The conversations are different. Both of us have been married before and we’re older, so we’ve a lot more to talk about. It’s different the second time around if you’re lucky, and I got lucky, trust me. I’m boxing way above my weight.

It’s been a privilege. Someone said to me that I must be living my dreams, I’m so far past living my dreams I can’t remember what they were. I had no idea life was going to end up like this. This is a lesson for everybody to take on board. I’m on ‘Plan K’, not ‘Plan A’. Hang on in there, things will happen for you. The trophy goes to the one who stays the longest.

Has each decade gotten better and better as life has gone on?

Jesus, yeah! The saying, ‘I wish I knew then what I know now’ very much applies to age, as is the saying, ‘Youth is wasted on the young’. I think back to what I could have done and what I could have said. But I’ve no regrets whatsoever. If I went tomorrow, touch wood that I don’t, I would say, ‘What a ride’.

You live in America, but you were reunited with your kids to film the festive specials of Mrs. Brown’s Boys in Glasgow?

We hadn’t seen each other in months, so it was super. It was all hugs and kisses before we got down to business. It’s great to be working with them.

Will you spend Christmas in Ireland?

I spend every Christmas in Ireland. My last gig of the year is always Joe Duffy’s radio show on Grafton Street on Christmas Eve morning. I look forward to it every year. I started doing it when Gay Byrne was the presenter, so that was 30 years ago. I love doing it. No matter what happens, we’ll always be in Ireland for Christmas. It’s not really Christmas anywhere else.