How Brendan O'Carroll helped me through losing Grace

Mike Nolan has raised millions in memory of his daughter Grace — with the help of best pal Brendan O’Carroll, who also gave him a role in Mrs Brown’s Boys, writes Áilín Quinlan

FLORIDA, early 2002: a businessman and his best friend are sitting on a hotel balcony having a cup of tea. The businessman is 54-year-old Mike Nolan, a Cork father-of-seven grieving his nine-year-old daughter, lost to a rare genetic disorder two years previously. The best friend is comedian Brendan O’Carroll, the creator of the phenomenally successful TV series Mrs Brown’s Boys. The duo met in 1998 while playing a fundraising charity match in Cobh for footballer Paddy Shortt, a good friend of Nolan’s who had been diagnosed with cancer.

After the match, O’Carroll had offered the takings from the first night of his play Mrs Brown’s Boys, which was opening in the Everyman in Cork.