Mrs Brown’s Boys has no place in Britain in 2024

It’s almost Christmas – you know what that means. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire; cookies and milk for Santa Claus and, of course, the most sacred holiday tradition of all: cringing your way through the latest Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas special.

If you aren’t familiar with the show, first of all, can I come and live in your world? Second of all, it’s a bit of a throwback – Irish comedian Brendan O’Carroll plays the titular Mrs Brown (in full drag), and the show generally follows the exploits of her and the Brown family. The humour is generally pretty crude, with a healthy smattering of fourth-wall breaking and inside jokes for good measure.

It is also inexplicably, wildly popular here in the UK, with episodes garnering millions of viewers – around 11.5 million people watched the 2013 special live. It’s one of those weird things about living here that I don’t pretend to understand, not least because the entire format feels pretty outdated. It is not, to put it mildly, a politically correct show – and while that probably serves it quite well in certain corners, it may be that... shall we say “unique” quality that finally gets Mrs Brown’s Boys taken off our televisions forever.

During a cast reading of the script for the upcoming Christmas special, O’Carroll allegedly said “I don’t call a spade a spade, I call a spade a...”, with the “joke” seemingly being the implication of the unspoken n-word (the word “spade” has also historically been used as a racist slur against Black people). Speaking to the Daily Mail about the incident, a representative for O’Carroll said: “We would also like to clarify that the “n” word was absolutely not spoken, it was implied”.

The rehearsal was paused following the blunder, but later resumed – and the special is still planned to go ahead. O’Carroll called the incident a “clumsy attempt at a joke”, saying that it “backfired and caused offence which I deeply regret and for which I have apologised”.

But it raises the question of what exactly O’Carroll thought the “joke” he was making was. Almost-but-not-quite saying a racial slur isn’t a joke in and of itself – it’s just racism with a thin veneer of unaccountability. Of course, if you’re familiar with the comedian, this isn’t the first time he’s dabbled in this kind of outdated “ethnic humour”.

I haven’t seen much of the show (because I’m not a masochist), but I’ve seen bits and pieces here and there, often against my will. I’ve also seen the Mrs Brown’s Boys movie, released in 2014, in which O’Carroll plays a variety of roles, including a karate instructor. Now, picture in your mind’s eye what that might look like. Would it shock you to learn the O’Carroll plays the role in full yellowface? That the character is called “Mr Wang”? And that he performs the part with the type of stereotypical, nebulously Asian accent that would make Mickey Rooney blush?

Watching Mr Wang’s scenes again on YouTube, it really does feel like the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a comedy from the 1970s that your dad insists holds up, but that “you couldn’t make today because of woke”. The fact it happened the same year Interstellar came out completely blows my mind – it’s like discovering a T-rex wearing an Apple watch.

How O’Carroll’s recent comments have managed to cause this much of an uproar when that kind of material has been out there for an entire decade is beyond me. Another clip has also resurfaced of a joint interview with him and African American comedian Tyler Perry, where he speculates on Perry one day on appearing on the programme, saying “so far we haven’t had anyone of his colour in there, so I don’t know if we could have him in”.

Again, is that supposed to be a joke? What about Perry’s “colour” would preclude him from appearing in Mrs Brown’s Boys, exactly? Also, why is he so happy to admit that no Black actors haven’t appeared on his show yet?

This is the problem with refusing to be politically correct – when you don’t know where the line is, it’s very easy to stumble over it and cause genuine offence. I don’t know if these kinds of incidents are revealing something about O’Carroll’s personal beliefs on the issue of race, or if he’s just saying the first thing that comes into his head to get a reaction and overdoing it, but it’s a terrible look either way.

What I do know, though, is that he needs to have a long, hard think about what kind of comedy he wants to make going forward. Maybe he could start with having a few underrepresented groups appear on his show in the future – otherwise, he may soon find that he doesn’t have a show at all.