In this week’s episode of Living with Lucy, Lucy is touring with legendary comedian, singer and actor; Brendan Grace. He speaks to Lucy from the heart about his career, how he met his wife, some of the difficult times he’s experienced in his life.
As well as inviting her into his home in Killaloe, Brendan brings Lucy on a tour of some places that are quite special to him. She watches as he entertains crowds both north and south of the border and they travel to some of Ireland’s most beautiful spots, including some spectacular views over Lough Derg. The TV3 presenter also helps Brendan flex his artistic muscles with a ‘Still Life’ art class!
When asked by Lucy how he met his wife of 42 years Eileen, Brendan recalls that it was at one of his first ever solo gigs, and he considers himself extremely lucky for finding her.
“First of all I was very lucky. I had a very bright shiny star up there, looking down and I was doing a gig in the Talbot Hotel in Wexford. I had just gone solo and this girl was roaring laughing. At the interval I was going to go down and say ‘you’re after putting my timing off because you were laughing so loud everybody else had to wait until you were finished’ and then we just put eyes on each other. She was hot stuff,” he said.
Brendan also opens up to Lucy about the worst moment of his life. He had just arrived in New York, when he got bad news from home that his children had been involved in a road accident.
“We’ve had our ups and downs but definitely the most traumatic thing was the accident in 1999. I had just left Ireland I got out of JFK at the time and Brian, my roadie, my manager, my PA, my everything, said: ‘there’s been a bad accident and Melanie and Frank have been involved.’ I had to sit down. I started to get palpitations.
“The one thing that kept me and Eileen from total panic was the fact that Melanie spoke to me. She must have said to whoever was in the emergency room, ‘I need to speak to my dad’ and feebly, I could hear her voice on the other end of the phone saying ‘don’t worry dad’.
We can’t wait to get to know Brendan Grace a little better on tomorrow night’s Living with Lucy. You can catch it tomorrow night at 9.30pm on TV3.
