RTE Guide*
Saturday, 25 October 2014
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INTERVIEW
ou never asked
me about the
leg,” says Francis
"I was always happy,"says Francis Brennan and
you don't doubt it. But what is the secret of
his success? Donal O'Donoghue drops by his
Kerry home for tales of good times and bad
Brennan. In truth
I never noticed.
The hotelier, TV presenter (At Your
Service) and now author, is such a
helter-skelter of energy that you fail
to cop that his right leg is somewhat
shorter than his left. We were talking
about happiness when Brennan
mentions this, recalling how he
spent months in hospital as a child,
undergoing 11 major operations by
the age of 11. “They told my mother
that I would never walk again,” he
says. “But my mother says it never
really impacted on my life that I just
got on with it. She says that I was
always happy as a child.”
Getting on with it could be
Brennan's motto, a man whose
mission in life is to make people
happy. When we arrive at The Park
Hotel, Kenmare, which he co-owns
with his brother, John, Mister B
is ‘doing the post’. “With you in a
minute,” he says with a wave from
an office beside reception. If you’ve
seen the RTE series At Your Service,
which Francis co-hosts with John,
you’ll know' him as a man of action.
Off screen it is no different. “Do ye
want some coffee or tea?” he queries,
before asking whether we want to use
the gents and wondering who will be
doing the interview and who will be
taking the photographs.
It’s the day of his 62nd birthday,
but he has no plans to celebrate (“I
don’t do birthdays!”) although he
suspects the staff might ‘surprise’ him
with a cake. Twro days earlier he was
awarded a Gold Medal Service to the
Industry Award (“Does that mean that
I’m on the other side of the slope?”)
and just this morning received the first
copies of his debut book, a guide to
etiquette, manners and more called It’s
The Little Things. In the late 1980s, he
put in place a pension plan that would
allow him to retire at 55. When that
went belly-up in the crash, everything
had to be revised. Today, retirement is
a little-used word in his vocabulary.
Following tea, homemade
shortbread and some hooting
tales from the trade (Brennan has
a limitless fund) we drive to his
townhouse. This smart, modem
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Because
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RTE Guide*
Saturday, 25 October 2014
Page:
8,9
66
84018
121200mm²
I usedto get
physically
sickgoingto
schooleach
morning99
building is currently rented out but
if he could sell his own home in the
country he would move back there
in a jiffy. “Oh yes,” he says as he
takes us on a whistle-stop tour of his
house, simply but stylishly furnished
with mod cons and modem art. “John
borrowed one of my paintings for
his hotel and never told me anything
about it,” he says with a shrug, as
he contemplates a blank wall. “He’s
always doing stuff like that.”
Brennan is great company. Smart
and shrewd certainly (how he
raised the funds to buy the Park is a
classic account of business acumen)
but also engagingly gossipy and
chock-full of advice. Just like his
book, It’s The Little Things, which
includes the dos and don’ts of Eating
Out, Social Media and Grooming.
“Manners begin at home”, is how it
begins from a man who, despite his
flamboyance, is rooted in tradition.
He is a practising Catholic, attends
mass every Sunday and for the past
32 years has gone on a pilgrimage
to Lourdes. “I absolutely believe in
God,” he says. “I love my faith and if
I was told that I was to die right now
T’d be fine with that.”
His own father, Tom, died in 1988,
after a long illness, but his mother,
Maura (91), is still the centre of his
world. “Oh yes, she’s still alive and
still giving out to me,” he says with a
laugh. He calls her every night. “Last
February, I was in California working
hard and John was in Spain and I’m
on the phone to my mother and she’s
going ‘Do you know that John’s in
Spain?’ I said yeah and she said,
‘That’s not right, there’s no Brennan
in Kenmare!’And I said: ‘Mum, we
are closed, like helloT But she said:
‘Supposing there was a fire or a flood,
who would look after the hotel?”’ He
laughs again, but there’s no doubt that
the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Francis Brennan was bom to be
in the hospitality trade. As a kid he
loved dressing up in his old man’s
“Fred Astaire coat”. Then, when he
was nine or so, his parents announced
plans to open a guesthouse in Sligo
(his mother’s home place). This
thrilled young Francis, who reckoned
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* It's The Little Things:
Francis Brennan's Guide to
is published by Gill &
Macmillan.The new series
of At Your Service sta rts on
RTEOne in early 2015.
Life
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he could wear the tailcoat in his
new role as a porter. The guesthouse
never happened but at the age of 15,
Brennan got his first proper job as a
waiter at the Step Inn in Stepaside,
Co Dublin. “I could keep 40 tables
happy,” he says, and after that there
was no looking back: Cathal Brugha
Street catering college, Parknasilla
and the Victoria Hotel, Cork, before
arriving at the Park in 1979.
Bom and raised in Dublin, Brennan
is now an honorary Kerryman. “The
Kerry' people can be devils sometimes
but I love them,” he says. He was
one of five children (in chronological
order: Damien, Francis, Kate, Susan
and John) and his father, who ran
a grocer’s shop, instilled in them a
life-long work ethic. Now every time
Francis passes Templenoe Church, on
the way to work, he blesses himself
and quietly says three Hail Marys for
his father. Were they close? “No, not
at all,” he says. “My dad worked nine
to nine, Monday to Sunday, in the
shop. He had a tough old life. I have
been all over the world but my dad
got no break in life, only hard work
and then he got ill and then he died.”
Fatherhood was something that
never happened for Francis Brennan
because, he says, he was just too busy.
“I would have liked kids but I never
gave myself the opportunity. It’s
completely my own fault. I’ve lived
on my own all my life so I would
have no idea what it would be like to
have people around the house. You
couldn’t live with me now, no way,
forget about it. I just have everything
in its own place and all is organised.
The scissors has its own place in
the drawer and if I went there and it
wasn’t there I’d be wondering, ‘Feck,
where is me scissors?’ But that’s
nothing new. My father long ago
a whole different thing and I’m not
going there,” he says, before he does.
told me that nobody could live with
me. He was a bit like that himself,
“I was an altar boy and there was
this priest. Now maybe I just knew
everything was straight lines.”
Brennan is a man of routine. He
doesn’t cat between meals, never
instinctively but 1 certainly wasn’t
going near him. He was a devil, I
heard afterwards.” But he got a hard
smoked and is teetotal, having taking
the pledge at his Confirmation. He has
lived by himself all his life. Does he
time at school, from students who
called him names because of his
disability and was “murdered for no
not miss having a partner? “Now hold
on and I’ll tell you,” he begins. “I’m
reason” by the Christian Brothers.
“I used to get physically sick each
morning,” he says. “I was terrified of
a Catholic and what does the Church
say: ‘You don’t live with someone
and so I haven’t because I abide by
the rules. Now that was unusual and
in die hotel business you could have
a different person every night but I
didn’t do that because that is not what
the rules say. I’m very happy and
as for companionship, I’m never at
home. I can go to Rio or New York or
Seattle where I have friends. I never
noticed that lack of companionship.”
If Brennan is black and white
about his beliefs he’s greyer on the
institution of die church. “Now that’s
the teachers. I was an average student,
but they murdered me.”
Even so he says that “there is no
point in looking back.” He doesn’t
bear grudges and believes that too
much thinking can be bad for you.
Faith is his badge, hard work his elixir
and making people happy keeps it all
going. “I’m not a great thinker, I don’t
go home at night and ponder things,
but I have a faith and I believe that on
the day 1 die I will go into an afterlife
and I will meet everybody there.”
Now that would be some party.