The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll by Brian Beacom

and got twenty-one thousand pounds for it, putting the whole lot into the new house, at Ninety-Two Deer Park, with underfloor heating, the lot. And a very low mortgage.’
    The mammy and son – and his new wife – in the same house? Well, it didn’t, as you would expect, run entirely smoothly.
    ‘My mam did her own thing but there were times when she and Doreen were at loggerheads.
    ‘In the early days it was tough because I would come home and me mam would say, “There’s your dinner.” And then Doreen would come in from work later, cook, and ask me, “Why are you not eating your dinner?” So I used to eat both.’
    They all managed to coexist, the biggest downside being Brendan’s expanding girth.
    ‘And I got to talk to my mother more and more. We had great discussions.’
    Brendan and his mammy would still argue ferociously. ‘But not about anything trivial. It was always about something major.’
    The family triangle had moved up in the world, but the income had to support that. And Brendan, now 21, badly wanted a career beyond waiting tables.
    ‘One of the things I did shortly after I got married was to try and become a farmer. So I rented out some acreage in North County Dublin and began to grow things.
    ‘I knew from the hotel business that the most difficult part of being a chef was preparing the vegetables, so I bought myself a peeler and peeled the potatoes for the hotel. And I also did ready-prepared vegetables such as sprouts, chopped carrots and turnips, the sort of things you can buy in supermarkets now.
    ‘It was one of the nicest jobs I ever had, out in the field in the summer, delivering the produce to the hotels, and I loved watching everything grow, picking the celery or whatever at the right time.
    ‘But at the end of the year I did all the sums and broke even. Talk about naive. I didn’t realise that most businesses struggle to survive the first year and to break even was pretty good. I had the ideas, but not the wherewithal to make it all work.’
    He had to make it all work. Doreen announced she was pregnant. Brendan was thrilled at the idea of becoming a father. But now the pressure was on him to provide.
    His next venture was into the world of publishing.
    ‘I got a job selling advertising with a company called Soccer Reporter and they produced a football magazine. But we also had the contract with the Irish Football Association to sell advertising into their 15,000 programmes, which we’d make and give over for nothing, but we’d get all the advertising revenue.’
    Brendan loved the challenge.
    On 23 February 1979, Doreen gave birth to a son, whom the couple decided would be called Brendan. But the tiny little boy was born with hydrocephalus spina bifida.
    ‘The doctors said, “Your baby is in The Holy Angels’ Ward.” They had had to operate on him while he was still in the womb, to remove fluid from the brain. But every time they removed fluid, it would damage him. As a result, he was born blind. Then the next thing we discovered was that he was paralysed, and I remember kneeling and begging God to take him – for selfish reasons, because I didn’t think I could cope. I didn’t even want to see him because he had no longer become the baby I had pictured in my head. Then the doctors let me see him. I saw he was lying on his side with tape running down his back covering the spine, and his left foot was badly turned and his head swollen. God love him, he was a mess.
    ‘Then a voice behind me declared, “He’s a beautiful child, Brendan.” I said, “He doesn’t look so bad.” The doctor let me put my two hands into the incubator and hold Brendan, who had the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen. And he was beautiful. Just beautiful. I held his little hands and of course bravado kicked in. And I said, “Well, when can I have him home?” And the doctor said, “Mr O’Carroll, you’ll never have him home. Brendan could live for three days, three weeks, three months.