Francis Brennan ready to go it alone on At Your Service

Francis Brennan is back on our screens, this time without his brother John. Liz O’Brien meets the renowned hotelier on the set of the new series. 

Francis Brennan is back on our screens in At Your Service, but this time without his trusty side-kick and brother John Brennan. He’s stepped back from the limelight to concentrate on family life and his luxury camping business, Dromquinna Manor.

“One of the reasons John gave up the TV show is because he doesn’t like being noticed all the time, he finds it very intrusive.

“The day he decided never to do it ever again, he was coming back from Dublin (two Christmases ago) and his wife wanted five-inch white candles for something she was doing for Christmas.

“She said, ‘Pull in there to Homestore & More, in Cork’. They stopped parked the car, he opened the door to get out and she said, ‘Oh no’ — because if he went, it takes a half an hour, but if she goes it takes seven minutes.

“That was the very second he said: ‘Never again, because it’s impinging now on my family.’”

Francis supports John’s decision. He says fame can be wonderful, because “you always get the best table”, but inconvenient because you might be stopped 15 times doing something simple — like walking from one end of Patrick Street in Cork to the other.

He doesn’t let fame go to his head and recalled a story about being asked to pose for photographs 50 times in one day while at his hotel, The Park, Kenmare.

He had just settled back in to his chair when “this man sticks his head around the door and he says, ‘Would you do a photograph?’”

Of course Francis agreed. He went outside, stood in front of the Park Hotel Kenmare canopy and gathered everyone around him for the photo.

“And so there we were, five of us on the top step looking down and there was nobody there… so I said: ‘Who’s taking the photograph?’ And the man says ‘You are’ — because he didn’t know who I was from Adam! He was American and he only wanted a photograph of them at The Park.

“So, I thought, ‘Oh ya, almost famous again Francis’.”

Being on television “is good for business” but he’s a hotelier first and foremost and he’s passionate.

If he’s in Kenmare he’s working at the hotel everyday — checking people in and out, taking bookings.

Every day he commutes 11 miles to work. He lives alone and rarely spends time in his 1870-built Kerry cottage in Tahilla — three miles from Sneem. He can cook, but usually eats at The Park and occasionally he stays there overnight.

“When we do up rooms I always sleep in them; just to see.

“You know, you put your hand out in the middle of the night and there’s no light switch because they forgot to put it there — the wallpaper went over the space that it was at — so you find all of those sorts of things.”

Maintaining his successful hotel’s high-standard is costly — an annual spend on wallpapers and carpets could cost €150,000 — but Francis says it’s important.

He thinks other Irish hotels are also up to the mark when it comes to standard but says the country is over-subscribed in hotels.

During the recession he saw many profitable and viable businesses fail because loans expired and new loans weren’t available.

“We have had difficult years, it hasn’t been easy, but the bank has been very supportive and we’re fine.

“But a lot of family hotels got into trouble — a lot of banks were leaving Ireland and saying, ‘Your loan’s finished on this date and you have to get a new loan’, but you couldn’t get a new loan… nobody would give you the money.

“I know four or five families, real businesses making money, who went out of business because of that.”

Through At Your Service, he and John have helped many hotels, pubs and restaurants make their business more viable. One Francis is particularly proud of is The Strand in Dunmore East, which he says is thriving since taking heed of their advice.

About 84 shows have aired to date and once filming is finished it’s almost policy to not keep in contact with those they’ve helped. And, even if Francis wanted to, he wouldn’t have the time.

He doesn’t do ‘down-time’. Between his annual two-month business trip to America, annual pilgrimage to Lourdes to help look after 50-plus patients with special dietary needs, releasing two books in two years, being on the board of Fáilte Ireland, filming for TV, and possibly launching a TV career Stateside — he never has time for himself.

How does he juggle it all?

“Sometimes I wonder.

“In my whole life I only ever missed one appointment, which can happen, but I completely [forgot]. I don’t keep a diary; I keep it all in the head… I know it sounds dangerous!

“My brother now, John, he has everything on his iPhone and I have it all in my head, we’d be quite different.”

The pair only became close in later years — there’s 11 years between them, so when John was 11, Francis was 22 and had left home for university.

Francis thinks this upcoming series will have “a different dynamic” without his brother.

When they both worked on the show they each had different elements to film and didn’t necessarily work with each other.

“We always try to bring someone in to do best practice, so John would do those pieces.

“John would be off at yoga school in Clare and a horse-riding studio in Tipperary, and a chocolate factory in the Burren and I never see those (segments) and we’d never discuss it, we’d never even mention it.

“The way the show works is, it’s like a jigsaw; Maggi the producer sees the whole jigsaw and we don’t, because there’s times she’ll say to me, ‘Would you say it this way Francis because there’s a bit of film further back where that fits in’.”

When I met Francis, he was filming at McCarthy’s Bar, Fethard, Tipperary — and said it was the “quirky” episode in the series because McCarthy’s is a pub, restaurant and undertakers.

The owner wanted to revive the building’s guest rooms, but Francis advised against it saying it wasn’t cost effective. Instead he suggested revamping the restaurant, clearing out a room to create an office and updating the room where they sell coffins.

That episode airs tomorrow at 8.30pm on RTÉ One.

“I’m always in America in January and February when they go out. Maggi (the producer) gives me the DVDs, but I’m hardly likely to sit at home and watch myself on TV for the two nights in my life that I’m home, looking at myself on television — that’d be the last thing that I’d do.” He hasn’t seen 60% of the shows.

‘But when I do see it, now I think, ‘Cripes, I didn’t even know we did that’.

“I always find it interesting, you couldn’t but, you’d want to be an auld stick in the mud if you didn’t.”