Mrs Brown’s Boys’ creator Brendan O’Carroll ‘defends using racial slur’

Mrs Brown’s Boys’ creator Brendan O’Carroll has ‘mounted an extraordinary defence of using the N-word’.

Last week the Irish comedian, 69, came under fire after it was revealed rehearsals on his show’s upcoming Christmas special had been halted temporarily after ‘implying’ the racial slur.

After the BBC investigated the incident, O’Carroll apologised for his ‘clumsy attempt at a joke’, which he said had ‘backfired and caused offence’.

Now it’s been reported that just a few weeks ago he argued in defence of such controversial comedy and claimed it was reasonable when he was in character as alter-ego Agnes Brown.

In an interview, O’Carroll cited a sketch that also alluded to the same word in the 2022 Netflix movie A Madea Homecoming, in which he appeared alongside Tyler Perry

The ‘hilarious’ sketch he referred to was based on two characters with contrasting Irish and American accents so that the word ‘knickers’ is misunderstood as ‘n*****s’.

Recalling the sketch as a success, Brendan told the Mail Online: ‘I did the movie with Tyler Perry, and we were about four years in the planning of it.

‘But we’d have Facetimes, and the scene that we do, the knicker/n***er piece, we howled laughing at it.

‘And we agreed that we wouldn’t get away with it – but [our characters] Madea and Mrs Brown would.’

He added: ‘So we did it, and it became one of the highlights of the f***ing movie.’

Re-enacting the scene, he went on: ‘In the movie Agnes says, “Now hold on, don’t be getting your knickers in a twist”. To which the reply is: “Did you call me a n***er?”

‘Agnes says: “No, no, I said knicker.” “N***er?”. “Knicker!”. “N***er? Knicker!”.’

O’Carroll then said when filming the scene, ‘the place fell apart laughing’.

The comedian also added that over the past 13 years writing his comedy series for the BBC, he’d never been asked to cut any material over concerns it might offend.

He said that ‘Mrs Brown is Mrs Brown, and they just run it as it is.’

His comments came after Mrs Brown’s Boys was engulfed in scandal after he implied the N-word during a script reading while in character as Agnes.

He was accused of starting to utter the N-word before he was stopped by a co-star.

A BBC insider told Metro: ‘The BBC takes the matter extremely seriously and Brendan also takes the matter extremely seriously.

‘Brendan is under no illusion about this. We have made it clear what the consequences of any future issues would be.’

Meanwhile his spokesperson told the publication that ‘the “n” word was absolutely not spoken, it was implied’.

They added: ‘Agnes (Mrs Brown) began the word but was stopped from finishing it by her daughter Cathy, as she knew she would be.’

Rehearsals at the broadcaster’s Pacific Quay studios in Glasgow have now resumed, with shows set to go out on the BBC on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day as planned.

Metro.co.uk has contacted representatives for Brendan O’Carroll for comment.