Eamon Morrissey, The Brother 1992, Kenny Live

the brother started Life as a character in an Irish Times column written by miles agine but nowadays if you mention the brother the person who immediately Springs to mind is my next guest he first performed his onean show way back in 1974 since then he's traveled all over the world with the show he's done a TV version of it and this week a new video of the brother has been launched will you welcome please the brother's brother aan [Applause] Marcy sit down there please what what exactly is your relationship with the brother H it's it's difficult after all these 20 years it's much I I think it's a bit like the relationship between parties in a coalition government you know it's it's it's great when it's going well but when things start going B I get to hate the guy I really do yeah you've been doing it a long time that's a long time and it is of all the the shows i' the One Man shows I've done it is the hardest one to work on it is really I mean from an acting point of view you have to work so hard every night to do it because I think the guy on stage is such an appalling boore he really is one of the world's great bores and it's a very thin line between being a funny boar and being actually the most boring person ever on stage well you don't suffer in your private life you don't suffer bores gladly I mean the pub boar you are very familiar with I know that gazer too well and the pubs are infested everywhere with them and uh funny I mean I've been stuck investigating pubes for for for 30 years of my life and I'm still doing it and uh the the research goes on I just I I can't I don't seem to be able to stop on it the pub Bo there are all sorts of manifestations of the pub Bo the worst manifestation of the pub Bo is The Great Character every local seems to have a great character and have you ever know when you go into a when you go into a pub the locals love to introduce you to The Great Character and that means the locals get a night off and you're stuck with them cuz usually hasn't drawn a sober bread since the night Kennedy died you know that kind of and you're stuck in a corner for the night Listen to I call call I got oh protect me from the they're all over the place what do they talk about these days I mean do they have particular subjects oh well they have there is a general range so one of the great ones in Irish pubs is is the great feeling that there's always I wonder what's behind that no matter what it is you know the bus was late I wonder what's behind that now know I mean I fell down the law tell me this election was all planned actually you had to it's obvious you know cuz I mean it must have taken some organizing for B ha to get his look like on the 20 note it's all behind it you know it's another we get did they talk have they got particular subjects like U you know trendy subjects the ozone layer for example the ho in the ozone layer is big one see they can tell you like I do understand that I mean all this uh this uh overheating in theer the greenhouse effect I don't understand look cuz I have one you know a greenhouse look you know it's basically the same thing has happened the overheat and you solve the problem the same way look as you do in a green you open a window in the upper upper atmosphere you know and you have it organized you that's brilliant he kind of believes it yeah now tell us who is the brother look I wish that's a hard question I wish I I even after all these years I'm not quite sure I know because he never appears on stage the guy I play is the brother's brother H he's a kind of I he's all everyone's the lay man's expert on everything and I think we've all listened to people who talk about well the brother you see he know he he'd explained that to you you know if you're looking to get something cheap the brother he's the man for that want to bit a plumbing the brother he's a brilliant the brother the brother and the guy is so sincere about and so in awe of this brother his you never actually get round to tell you know what your brother's an awul ages and he usually is but he's an he's an Amateur Surgeon oh everything I mean the brother he does a job his own NOS is old of B you know but he he'll take the razor to the nose before you're much older or they'll be blood in the bathroom any night now he looks after himself he looks after Charlie's Health he he did Charlie's kidneys in 1934 gave them a overhaul and that's the thing none of your doctors have throw their hands at you know so he is he's into all sorts of but he's one of those wonderful creations of Brian and OD of Myers got F of Brian the man of so many names for himself H the wonderful writing like in the third policeman one of the characters I take into the brother is Sergeant pluck who is a policeman with his own own Obsession about it did you ever hear of the molecule Theory everything do you see is composed of small particles of itself all darting around an arc circles figurines and these gentlemen are called atoms do you follow me now the atomic theory is very difficult to explain but if you had a bar of iron and you hit that bar of iron a number of smacks with a good coal Hammer some of the atoms from the bar of iron will go into the coal hammer and vice versa do you follow me now would it surprise you to know the atomic theory is at work in in this Parish it would with the growth and that result that people who spend most of their natural lives riding on iron bicycles through the rocky roadsteads of this Parish have already got their own personalities mixed up with the personalities of the bicycles some are even worse than 50% bicycle the unfortunate Postman I would say is already 71% and so on but I mean it's this obsession with that flab Brian's characters have with with really starting from a very mundane thing like a bicycle and then this one mad Theory evolves out of it yeah because in at swim to birds there was a whole scientific explanation of the gas meter oh that's a wonderful break yeah I mean the story in the novel is Bel along and they all stop then and on the sand draw out how to read a gas meter yeah cuz he must have had some sort of rudimentary uh idea of science because in in the brother for instance when he talks about the brother can't look at an egg there's a bit of Science in there yeah well that's that has a strange Al though that would have been written way back in the' 40s but I mean when you think of uh things went on the brother can't look at an egg can't stand the size of an egg at all man ham cheese fish you no eggs thanks very much but no the egg is bad I do often hear the brother saying how dangerous eggs are and all the diseases you see the trouble with an egg is it never dies it's all full of microbes you see and once the egg gets down inside in the bag the microbes start marching around the place Del light with themselves oh no trouble at all to your men the microbes to cause a nuls on the side just imagine your men that might marching up and down your stomach eating drinking and breeding families I do chance the ache myself sometimes but one of these days I'll be a sorry man