'Mrs Brown's Boys' star Brendan O'Carroll was 'terrified' of catching coronavirus around US home

Mrs Brown's Boys creator and star Brendan O'Carroll was "terrified" of catching COVID-19 while isolating at his US home earlier on in the pandemic.

The actor, who has an underlying heart condition, and his wife Jennifer Gibney live in Florida but claimed to find themselves in the minority in their area when it came to preventative measures like wearing masks.

“I had a stent put in my heart over a year ago and was terrified I would pick up the virus," he told the Irish Mirror. “We live on a golf course here in America and honestly if you didn’t watch the news, you’d never know there was a pandemic and over 300,000 people have died.

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“People would look at us like lunatics as we’d run in and out of shops with our masks on and only touch things we were buying.

"The Americans hadn’t a clue what was going on and lived life like normal. Every day we would play golf and deliberately stay away from people."

On Thursday, the United States recorded more than 3,000 deaths in a 24 hour period, the highest total in one day anywhere in the world.

As well as health concerns, O'Carroll wanted to ensure he would be able to fly to Glasgow to film the Mrs Brown's Boys Christmas and New Year's specials in September.

Shooting was able to go ahead, but the comedian said the cast and crew were given 40 pages of filming restrictions by the BBC for safety reasons.

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The first of the festive specials is set to air at 10pm on BBC One, and will include references to the pandemic.

O'Carroll explained scripts had originally mentioned it "a lot" but he thought people would be "sick of COVID" by the time Christmas rolled around.

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