Brendan O'Carroll

Brendan O'Carroll wants two special guests on his show

Mrs Brown's Boys star Brendan O'Carroll has said he would love to have presenters Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield as guests on his new TV chat show - along with their mothers.

Brendan O'Carroll wants to make Trump documentary

Brendan O'Carroll's next role could be a more serious one - he's put the wheels in motion to front an upcoming documentary about US President Donald Trump.

Judy Murray and her mum were Mrs Brown's first guests

TV's most devious mammy reveals how Andy's mum fared on the sofa and tells us what to expect from All Round to Mrs Brown's.

Mrs. Brown chatshow a reassuring move by the BBC

The mega success of Dublin's most offensive widow may gobsmack many, but the BBC knows when it's on to a good thing - and how to maximise it.

Could Mrs. Brown really beat Ant and Dec?

The BBC could easily have a hit on their hands for when Strictly Come Dancing is out of season.

Why you just don't get Mrs Brown's Boys

Can't fathom how Brendan O'Carroll's comedy became such a big hit at Christmas (and the rest of the year)? Sarah Doran investigates...

I decided not to lazily write off Mrs Brown's Boys. It remains absurdly successful, despite critics having generally trashed Brendan O'Carroll's creation as demeaning, cheap, grotesque, simplistic to the point of catalepsy, savagely lacking in wit. So I watched it, and was surprised. It's all of these insults, yes, but the immersive experience is actually, shockingly, worse than expected. Sentimental to retching-point, homophobic, itch-lousy with single entendres, somehow managing to be both twee and vulgar, achingly unfunny, it made The Vicar of Dibley look like Father Ted.

I suspect those of us in our high ivory metropolitan-elite towers (translation: humans who paid even nugatory attention to at least one class in school) missed a trick in 2016: the popularity of this shameless excrescence (I can now write it off after due diligence), which was voted by Radio Times readers the best sitcom of the 21st century, should have given a huge clue to the Brexit vote.

Mrs Brown: Jokes 20 years past their sell-by date

O'Carroll's speech about bullying had me retrospectively wishing I hadn't loathed what had gone before. Yet the irony was that for the previous 30 minutes the viewer had been menaced with endless groaners.