‘Mrs Brown paid for my house’, says star Rory Cowan
“My house, I call it the house that Mrs Brown built. Mrs Brown, God bless her, that mouthy auld one from Finglas, she paid for my house, she paid my mortgage,” he said.
Rory explained that he had just bought his home when he began working with the show’s creator, Brendan O’Carroll.
“I had bought my house, I was working trying to keep my mortgage and I wasn’t keeping my mortgage up, I was really behind in my mortgage payments.
“The banks at one time gave me two weeks to get IR£2,000, back in 1992, or else they were taking the house back and it was around that time that I started working with Brendan,” he told the yesterday.
The actor said he had just lost his job at the time and teaming up with Brendan O’Carroll was the “luckiest day” of his life.
“I’m with him [Brendan] 25 years, he has never steered me wrong. I got my house a few months before I met him and then I was made redundant. Mrs Brown paid for my house.
“I was the marketing manager for the EMI [a music business] in Ireland. I was made redundant, I had the house six months.
“When I left EMI I was managing Christy Dignam, because he wasn’t in Aslan at the time, he had left them and I was also managing a drag act called Mr Pussy,” he said.
“I had seen Brendan a few months before when I was in EMI and one venue said: ‘The two nights we put on Christy and Mr Pussy we had the biggest crowd we’ve had in here in 20 years.’ And they said: ‘Do you know anybody else?’
“And I said: ‘Well there’s a comedian I saw six months ago called Brendan O’Carroll, if I can find him....’
“And I got Brendan and that’s when I started working for him, I promoted the show in a pub and then he took me on as his publicist and it was the luckiest day of my life that I met him,” he added.
Rory was talking at the launch of TV3’s new schedule yesterday. He and Deirdre O’Kane will be the voices behind Gogglebox Ireland.
“What I love about Gogglebox is that it’s not a mean show, it’s not like reality shows where people are competing with each other or getting up to little tricks to make someone look bad,” he said.
