Mrs Brown’s Boys star Brendan O’Carroll has revealed the heartbreaking reason he first got into comedy.
Appearing on This Morning on Tuesday, the Irish actor, 67, said his obsession with being funny started when he was just 10-years-old.
Brendan left viewers in tears as he spoke about the time he lost his father Gerard, who passed away in 1964, and how it carved his career.
Two weeks after his father died, Brendan recalled hearing his mother sobbing in her bedroom.
“I thought my job now is to make her laugh every day. And I did. Virtually every day,” he told ITV ’s Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield.
The comedian said he kept his promise until his mum Maureen passed away in 1984. “She died laughing,” he said.
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Brendan details his experience in his upcoming book ‘Call Me Mrs. Brown’.
The memoir is his first autobiography and will delve into the Irishman’s childhood growing up in Fingas, Dublin as the youngest of 11 children.
Sharing more about the tragedy that led him to comedy, Brendan said: “About two weeks after my dad died. I was 10 years old.
“We lived in a council house. The bedroom was upstairs and the toilet was downstairs.
“I came down in the middle of the night to go for a pee – got most of it in the bowl, it was great.”
He continued: “On the way back up the stairs I saw the light under me mam’s bedroom. Didn’t surprise me because she liked to read in bed anyway.
“But as I got closer I could hear her sobbing. And I sat on the stairs and I was crying myself.”
He said it was this experience that made he want to make his mum laugh on a daily basis and says “that’s when I started being funny”.
Another emotional moment in the book was when the telly star writes about the loss of his baby son, who was also called Brendan.
The tot was the first child for the actor and his first wife Doreen and arrived two years after they tied the knot in 1977.
But the new parents suffered unimaginable tragedy when their baby passed away just one week after being born.
Doctors told the couple their newborn had a condition called hydrocephalus and spina bifida, meaning there was extra fluid around his brain.
Lots of babies born with hydrocephalus (congenital hydrocephalus) have permanent brain damage and if they survive, can experience several long-term complications throughout their life including speech and vision problems.
Brendan said before his son was even born he had a picture in his head of a perfect family life at home with the 'baby out back on a swing that I had made', before poignantly adding: "Suddenly I had found myself in what I thought was a nightmare."
Sadly, Brendan was then told by a doctor how he and Doreen would probably never be able to take their newborn son home from the hospital - something that led to the comedian going to his car to cry.
"I wished I could do something to change all that was happening. But I couldn't. All I could do was be an onlooker and cheerleader, and, for a week, a father," Brendan added.
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