Carry on swearing

WHETHER you love it or hate it, you can’t deny that Mrs Brown’s Boys is best-loved for its fourth-wall breaking and (often unintentionally) bad language.

The BBC aren’t too keen on those elements of its old-school Irish charm, though, as the sitcom’s creator Brendan O’Carroll recently revealed. While speaking at a screening ahead of the show’s Christmas and New Year specials, O’Carroll admitted that the Beeb asked him to cut down the show’s swearing.

Recalling Danny Cohen’s takeover as the corporation’s controller, Brendan explained (via The Mirror): “I had been invited for an ‘F’ meeting.” “He spent the first 10 minutes telling me how lucky the BBC felt to have found me and the family, how wonderful Mrs Brown’s Boys was and how he liked that there was also pathos there and hopefully a message at the end…

We were going through all of this stuff.” “F**king bored” with the conversation, Brendan then asked Cohen: “‘Danny, can we cut to the chase? You want me to stop saying ‘f**k’ so you can put the show on at eight o’clock.’ “And he said, ‘Exactly’.” We’re guessing the answer was a resounding feck off, then.

Fortunately for fans, Mrs Brown and the family will be back in all their usual sweary glory for two festive specials this year, ‘Exotic Mammy’ and ‘Mammy’s Motel’.

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