The creator of Mrs Brown's Boys Brendan O'Carroll has told This Morning of the heartbreaking reason he got into comedy.
Speaking to Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on the ITV Daytime show, he explained his dad's passing back in 1964 opened up his career.
The 67-year-old - who is about to start filming a new series of the BBC hit show in Glasgow - says his obsession with comedy started at the age of 10.
Weeks after the death of his father, the Irish comic said he heard his mum sobbing in her bedroom. “I thought my job now is to make her laugh every day. And I did. Virtually every day,” he said.
The comedian said he kept his promise until his mum Maureen passed away in 1984. “She died laughing,” he added.
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.”
Brendan also recently revealed he was once on the verge of a breakdown after suffering a major financial loss on a movie he had written before finding fame on the BBC.
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