Mrs Brown's Boys star Gary Hollywood has told how he refused a role in The Bill to be a part of the hit BBC show.
Gary played Dino Doyle, the Scottish hairdresser on the programme written by Brendan O'Carroll, but left in 2020 amid an alleged pay dispute.
Damien McKiernan, who played his boyfriend Rory, was written out of the show at the same time.
The 41-year-old told GB News: "I met himself (Brendan), while doing Panto up in the Pavilion in Glasgow and he said what are you doing after this?
"I'd just left the soap opera Take The High Road and I said I’m heading down to London, as I've got The Bill, possibly with six months work.
"Brendan said I've written this show and there’s a year's work and my children were young at the time, so I thought oh a year's work, let's go with that and then twenty years later and we had our ups and downs and needless to say we moved on from that."
Brendan, who created Mrs Brown's Boys, says he was on the edge of a "breakdown" after suffering a major financial loss on a movie he had written before finding fame with the BBC comedy.
The TV star, 67, plays the role of the family matriarch in the comedy, which is set to return for a new series and start filming at BBC studios in Glasgow soon.
But Brendan has revealed he felt ‘numb’ before landing the role as funding on a film he had written and directed failed to secure financial backing, writes the Mirror.
Brendan found himself in serious debt after funding for the flick, called Sparrows, fell through. His money woes also occurred in the same year he split from his first wife Doreen Dowdall.
Get the latest celebrity gossip and telly news sent straight to your inbox. Sign up to our weekly Showbiz newsletter here .
