Spontaneous donation from Mrs Brown star

Mrs Brown’s Boys creator Brendan O’Carroll has donated almost  £25,000 to a young family left without a mother following a car crash in Australia.

The comedian was touched by the story when he heard it on the news show The Project, where he was plugging his live tour.

Channel 10 reporters had earlier covered the story of  Sarah Paino, 24, who died when her car was hit by a stolen vehicle in Hobart, Tasmania, on Friday, when she was 32 weeks pregnant.

Her unborn baby, who has been named Caleb, survived and was delivered in hospital where he remains in intensive care. 

O’Carroll’s spontaneous AU$50,000 donation will go to a foundation set up to help her partner, Daniel Stirling, and the couple’s other child, Jordan, two.

He said as the programme came to an end: ‘I was really touched by the piece you did on Daniel in Hobart.

‘We’re very much a family [on the show], so if it’s OK with you guys through Channel 10, we as the Brown family would like to donate 50 grand to that fund.

‘We’ll travel out to do the show in Hobart and make you guys smile when we get out there, but in the meantime  Hobart’s been very good to us, we’d like the chance to be good back.’

The Project’s presenter Waleed Ali called it ‘an extraordinary gesture’ and O’Carroll said: ‘It’s a pleasure.’

O’Carroll regularly donates to good cause, latterly paying for the burial of a Polish man who was found dead on Christmas Day in Ennis, Co Clare, and whose family could not cover the costs.

Published: 26 Jan 2016