TELEVISION star Brendan O’Carroll’s grandfather was killed during the War of Independence because his sons were members of the IRA.
The Mrs Brown’s Boys creator reacted angrily when he realised the death of Peter O’Carroll, which his family believed was the result of a drunken attack by the Black and Tans, was in fact a premeditated execution by British forces in Dublin.
The comedian takes an emotional journey through the murky night of his grandfather’s death on October 16, 1920, in the fourth episode of Who Do You Think You Are, due to be aired on BBC1 on August 28.
While he had hoped to learn the truth of his grandfather’s murder by taking part in the programme, he found himself faced with much more when a name and a photo of the man who killed him were revealed.
“That’s the last face my grandfather saw,” he says in the hour-long programme.
“Jesus, he’s some b*****d. You know, in my case, it’s personal and I would have liked to have seen someone taken to account for it.”
Beginning with just a newspaper cutting bearing the report of Peter O’Carroll’s death, the 58-year-old Dubliner was assisted by historians, professors and experts on the War of Independence to discover the truth of his family’s tragic loss in the city nearly 100 years ago.
Ultimately it is witness statements of IRA members involved in the war, recorded in the 1950s, that reveal the man responsible as Jocelyn Lee Hardy - an intelligence officer in the British auxiliaries and a ‘very hostile killer’.
The records show Peter O’Carroll had received a visit at his hardware store from British army officers, who claimed if his sons, who were members of the IRA, did not surrender at Dublin Castle by a given date he would be shot.
By refusing to hand his children over, he seemingly sealed his own fate.
“They didn’t see my granddad as a person, they saw him as a piece on a chess board,” says O’Carroll.
“People say all is fair in love and war; but I don’t think that is fair.”
He added: “I get the feeling he knew he was going to die that day. He wasn’t going to shop his sons under any circumstances.
“So it was a pretty dire situation to be in; he went down to face what was going to be an inevitable execution.”
