The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll by Brian Beacom Read Free Book Online Page B

missed and who have missed them. And yes, I cry as I watch.’
    It’s not hard to see how Brendan would later come up with a Mrs Brown plot line, set at Christmas time, when Agnes would be beside herself at the thought of her son Trevor arriving home from America.
    Meantime, the death of Gerry O’Carroll resulted in a new dynamic in the house. Brendan had always been his mammy’s favourite, the chosen one. But with her husband gone, the focus on her tiny son sharpened.
    ‘The event changed everything. The day my daddy died, I released the birds. And my mammy spent a bit less time in local politics. I’d get much more of her attention. The attention of a genius.’
    Back at school, however, in the summer of 1965, Brendan was in for an entirely unexpected surprise.
    ‘In my absence, the class had got a new teacher. Not a stand-in, I was told by the lads, but a real, full-time teacher. His name was Billy Flood. As a young man, Billy Flood believed he had a vocation to the Church. He began his journey to train as a Christian Brother but changed his mind. However, he still wanted to teach. I now know that Billy Flood was born to teach. He couldn’t have been more than 21 years old – and looked about 16. I took one look at this baby-faced, horn-rimmed eejit and thought, “He won’t last long” because we were quite an intimidating bunch and had scared off more than a few hopefuls in our time.
    ‘But here’s the first thing I noticed about him that was different: he wasn’t afraid of us. The second, which puzzled me even more, was that he actually seemed to like us.
    ‘Now, to the modern-day school kid, the change Billy Flood brought to our classroom will seem petty, but not to us, who had spent our previous school years being beaten senseless, having the Three Rs rammed into us, and in general being despised by the men who were charged with preparing us for life as good citizens.
    ‘This was not Mr Flood’s way. He taught us to sing. At first we thought he was a queer, the word we used back then for gay. Sing? Us? When he announced this, we laughed. Boy, how we laughed. Then we sang. And he moved from desk to desk, tapping a tuning fork and getting each of us to sing the note. Using this guide, he divided the class into three groups and had us perform first, second and third harmonies.
    ‘This took an age, for there were some of the lads that wouldn’t do it at first and some who sounded like frogs masturbating. But by one o’clock that afternoon we were singing “Three Blind Mice” in virtually perfect harmony. I didn’t know it then, but at that moment, on that September afternoon, thanks to the enthusiasm of a baby-faced young teacher, my life was about to change.’
    Brendan hadn’t had a singing epiphany, or decided to launch himself as a pop star of the future (although he can certainly sing, as those who’ve witnessed his stand-up show will testify).
    ‘I knew that I could do something different. I didn’t know what it was, nor did I have the words to explain it, but I could feel that I was expressing myself. I knew a group of people together, singing, or whatever, could have a great time. Even in a school classroom.
    ‘One of the first things Mr Flood did was set up a library, in a Tayto Crisps box. I presume he used his own books from home. Then he put two of the hardest kids in the class in charge of it, so that protected it from miscreants but also gave it kudos. The very first book I took out was Treasure Island . I know today that I’m dyslexic, which explains why it took an age to read it, but I read it – and I loved it. I loved being transported to tiny islands on the high seas. I could feel the ship ploughing through the ocean, taste the salt of the sea water. It was magical. When I was finished, I returned it – well, you had to. It wasn’t like a real library. If you didn’t return it, you didn’t get fined, you got the shit kicked out of you by one of our “librarians” who