BRENDAN O’Carroll is delighted to have signed a massive new deal with the BBC — but he has also told the Irish Sun of his sadness at facing his first Christmas without his beloved sister.
The 65-year-old has put pen to paper on a deal that will see him create Mrs Brown’s Boys festive specials for the channel until 2026.
ZOOM REHEARSALS
'BEAUTIFUL PERSON'
As well as being kept off the road with the Mrs Brown’s Boys crew, Brendan sadly suffered the loss of his much loved older sister Fiona.
The pair were so close that Brendan decided her passing last May will be the opening chapter in the new memoir he is writing for Penguin Books.
Brendan told us: “If you didn’t like Fiona, there had to be something wrong with you! She was an exceptionally, kind generous, person. Any of my good points come from her. She was an exceptional person, a beautiful person.”
The father-of-four and wife Jenny had just returned to their home in Florida after filming chat show All Round To Mrs Brown’s in the UK when they got a message from Fiona’s husband Larry to say she was unwell.
Fiona, who often spent the winters with him in Florida but was based in Toronto, Canada, had been suffering from Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in recent years and had contracted pneumonia.
Brendan said: “I’d already booked a flight to go up and see Fiona in Toronto on March 8 — but Larry told us not to leave it that late.
“I immediately booked a flight that night to Toronto. We flew right through the night. Fiona and Larry live about three hours from Toronto so I’d rented a car at the airport.
“But we landed in Toronto at 3am, and the car hire place didn’t open until 6am so we had to hang around for three hours waiting for it to open.
“We’d come from sunny Florida and here we are driving through four feet of snow in Canada.
“Eventually we got to her house. Larry her husband, met me in the hallway and warned me not to expect too much because she had been out of it.
“So I go in to see her and within minutes of me arriving, Fiona is laughing her head off, and we’re singing ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’ together.
"We laughed, we told stories, then her nurse arrived so I went into the kitchen for a coffee with Larry, who I was concerned about too.
“I said to Larry, ‘What happens now?’ He said that Fiona would probably have a sleep after the nurse left. So I went back in after the nurse left, to tell her I was going to head to the hotel and drop my bags off.
“Fiona nodded, and then I took her hand. We had this little ritual where I would say ‘I love you’ and she would reply ‘I love you more’ and then I’d say ‘I love you the most’. But this time Fiona said ‘I love you the most, forever and ever’ and then she died.”
Speaking to the Irish Sun from Florida, Brendan is overwhelmed by emotion as he recalls this final moment with his loving sister.
Brendan said: “I wouldn’t regard myself as a Bible-thumping Catholic but I do believe in life after death.
"I firmly believe I’m going to see Fiona again, and my mother and my son, (Brendan’s son, also named Brendan, died in 1979 days after his birth from spina bifida).
“If I didn’t believe that I would shoot myself. What’s the point?”
'LITTLE FUSS'
Fiona, who had been in her 70s, had left word that she wanted as ‘little fuss' as possible over her funeal.
Brendan said: “We had a private cremation and planned a later service for her friends. That was supposed to happen in July but lockdown stopped that, so it will probably happen next year.”
Asked how he copes with the grief, Brendan said the best thing was to “keep talking about it”.
He said that the loss of mother Maureen, in 1984, a campaigning politician and mother of eight, had also been a huge blow.
