After being expelled from high-school he worked for a few years in the sanitation business. In the evenings he studied to become a journalist. Working on Radio Sjuhärad he came in touch with Nationalteatern in Gothenburg and began a new career as an actor. Around 1980 he created the grumpy and bossy character Kurt Olsson for a radio show. The fame grew and finally he got a chance to make a TV show, Kurt Olssons television (1987). This character became the star of several TV-shows but the difficulty of developing Kurt Olsson further has meant that the character was eventually scrapped. Brandeby went on with television comedy, for example with the long-running comedy show Rena rama Rolf (1994). Between 2006 and May 2011 he played the police commissioner Sven Andersson in a series of criminal dramas, "Irene Huss". He fell ill with a kidney condition in the summer of 2011 and passed away at the end of 2011.