Says Brendan O'Carroll

Mrs Brown’s Boys star Brendan O'Carroll has revealed that he once worked as Margaret Thatcher's butler.

He star spent four days attending to the former Prime Minister during a 1984 EU leaders' summit in Dublin Castle, as part of a hospitality team looking after foreign leaders.

'The first thing Mrs Thatcher said to me when she got out of the helicopter was that she wanted an Irish whiskey' O'Carroll recalled. 'She said it was her first time in Ireland and she had always wanted to try an Irish whiskey.'

But the comedian, whose mother Maureen was a Labour Party MP, was no fan.

'I didn't like her,’ he told Dublin's Herald newspaper. ‘Being from a strong trade union family, a Labour family, I wasn't predisposed to like her, but at the same time, I was very professional in my gig and tried to look after her the best I could.'

O'Carroll confirmed that Thatcher worked late into the early hours of the morning.

'I can remember being woken up one night by Mrs Thatcher's MI5 security team, who told me that the Prime Minister wanted “hot milk and pepper”.

'I brought it down to her, and years later when RTE offered me a quiz show and asked what I should call it, I said Hot Milk And Pepper after, Mrs T,' he added. They agreed, and the show ran for two series between 1996 and 1998.

O'Carroll confessed to mixed feelings about her death:

'A family is mourning the loss of their mother but the miners in England, they had families and Bobby Sands had a family. There were too many negatives.'

O'Carroll is about to start writing two Christmas specials of Mrs Browns' Boys for the BBC. He recently announced a 2014 stage tour of the show for Australia and has just signed a publishing deal for Mrs Brown’s Family Handbook, an illustrated hardback with comic tips on running a household.

Published: 17 Apr 2013