Brendan O’Carroll feared for his life when he thought he was dying from a heart attack.
The ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ star feared he was going to meet his maker during a terrifying experience hours after filming the comedy show’s Christmas special in Glasgow when he started to feel unwell and had to be rushed to hospital.
He said: "I thought I was having a heart attack. I had this bug and at about 2am I had to wake Jenny up. We were filming the Christmas special up in Glasgow.
"I said to her ‘You should call an ambulance’. We called the ambulance as we wanted to meet them on the street. When [wife and co-star] Jenny [Gibney] and I were in the lift we were still on 999. They told her to put her hand on my tonsil, to count my heart beat.
"It was all going on. I had the fright of my life and I thought I was a goner."
Fortunately, the emergency services ensured Brendan he wasn’t suffering from a heart attack and it turned out to be a "violent" sickness bug.
He explained: "When I got in the ambulance they said, ‘Well it is not your heart,’ and I vomited it out for 12 hours. I had a very violent bug."
The 62-year-old comedian – who plays matriarch Agnes Brown in the programme – also confirmed Rory Cowan will be replaced on ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ after he quit the show.
Speaking on Ireland’s ‘The Late Late Show’, Brendan added: "We now have a new Rory in the show. It is like he went for plastic surgery.
"We were going to get him come out of the shower like Bobby Ewing or out of a phone box like ‘Doctor Who’."
Rory portrayed Agnes’ son of the same name in the comedy, but he quit after getting "bored" of touring.
He said: "I got tired of it, I haven’t been happy for the last two years working there. There was no row with Brendan, there was no dispute over money or anything – in fact quite the opposite.
"I got so well paid it enabled me to be able to leave, I didn’t need to stay.
"What was killing me was we were doing the exact same arenas in the exact same order we did two years ago. I would have known week-by-week where I’d be until 2022 – and it’s not like they’re different every year, it’s the same thing.
"We’re so big now that years are scheduled out. It’s not exhausting, it’s just boring."
Brendan O’Carroll’s heart attack scare
