The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll Read Online Free

duchess-like habit of taking to her bed when things got a little demanding. And it would often be Martha or Patricia who would tend to the needs of her siblings when Gerry O’Carroll was at work.
    But when Maureen was at home, she made her presence felt. If the kids incurred her displeasure, they wouldn’t have to open the door to leave the room, they could slither out underneath it. Yet, she also had the talent of making people feel they were the most special in the world, a skill her youngest certainly inherited.
    When Maureen felt happy, in control and fulfilled, everyone was happy.
    Being a TD made Maureen O’Carroll very happy. And there was enough money for the family to buy a house in Ballymun, with three bedrooms (Maureen had a room to herself while Gerry shared a room with the boys), but with a separate kitchen and a large dining room.
    However, in February 1955, Maureen O’Carroll had real reason to take to her bed. The 41-year-old mother-of-nine felt sick. She had serious stomach problems. And she worried there was something badly wrong. Or perhaps she was going through the change?
    Her doctor examined her. That night she went home and wrote in her diary: ‘Went to see Dr Carney today. I’m either pregnant or I have a growth. (Please, God it’s a growth.)’
    Seven months later, on 15 September, the growth arrived weighing nine pounds three ounces.
    She called it Brendan.

The Growth
    FORTUNATELY, the growth wasn’t malignant, although it did make a bit of a noise at first and demand regular attention. Yet the O’Carrolls took to this blond-haired, blue-eyed little boy immediately. Seven-year-old Fiona was certainly in raptures from the moment she first clapped eyes on him.
    And there was a sense in which Brendan was indeed special. After all, the other kids had been born at home but Maureen O’Carroll deemed her final child would be born in a private nursing home.
    Three-year-old Eilish, however, no longer the baby of the family, didn’t think her baby brother to be that special. She wasn’t quite so happy at the spotlight being shunted away. (A few years later during her weekly confession, after she’d admitted to ‘a few fecks’, she’d confess to beating her little brother about the head on a regular basis.)
    And it’s fair to say Brendan was an attention grabber. Incredibly quick to learn, he almost bypassed the walking stage by running, a little boy who already seemed to have pressed the fast-forward button on life. (And his state of perpetual motion hasn’t stopped since.)
    Brendan was talking by the age of two and even a great imitator. He’d be in his high chair while the family were having dinner and the little Woody Woodpecker-like high voice (which would later become Agnes Brown’s) would yell out, ‘You’re all fecked now!’ And Maureen O’Carroll would yell, ‘Who taught him to say that?’
    The clever little foul-mouth (start as you mean to go on) could manipulate his sisters. Lying in bed, he’d say to Fiona, ‘Draw a map on my back’. And when she stopped, he’d say, ‘No, you’ve only drawn Ireland! It’s too small. Draw Russia!’
    Patricia was the sister most often left in charge of the baby brother while Mammy was off saving the world. And he was a handful. When doing the housework, she wanted the fast-moving infant out of the way, so she’d lift him up by his little dungarees and hang him up on a hook on the door. He’d just smile and say ‘Oh, oh!’
    ‘I loved it up on that hook,’ he recalls, grinning.
    Brendan had arrived into an already noisy world with nine siblings, and the older O’Carroll kids reaching their hormone-fuelled teens (Maureen, the oldest, was 18).
    And it was a constant competition for everything, from space to food to attention. Whoever could shout the loudest was heard. Whoever could eat fastest got seconds. Whoever could sing best was applauded. And the talent competition’s sole judge and jury? Maureen O’Carroll.
    When Brendan