Last laugh

BRENDAN O’CARROLL probably never thought he would look so good in lipstick, hair rollers and stockings so saggy they make those anonymous legs in the Tom and Jerry cartoons look sexy.

Alas, that’s where the Irish comic has found himself in Mrs Brown’s Boys.

But he’s having the last laugh, of course. Juggling the various projects he’s got on the go, this one was so wellreceived in its homeland that the Beeb couldn’t resist snapping it up – and it’s now proving just as popular over here.

O’Carroll plays the eponymous foulmouthed Dublin widower and mammy – a portrayal which after several series of stage plays, he has down to a tee.

Agnes Brown bothers herself not with her real job of running a fruit and veg stall, but interfering in her children’s lives.

O’Carroll still marvels at the show’s success, following its early beginnings as a radio show on the Irish network RTE in 1990.

He said: “It got to the stage where Dublin stopped for five minutes every afternoon so that people could listen.

“Taxis parked up, hairdressers turned off the dryers and prisoners asked to be locked in their cells. It also went crazy nationwide and I had no idea it was such a phenomenon.”

After a failed attempt at writing a movie, O’Carroll ran out of luck. But as he says “Mrs Brown saved my bacon”

after being asked to write a play based on it.

While he admits his mother is the inspiration behind Mrs Brown’s Boys, she’s not necessarily who the battleaxe is based on.

“My dad died when I was nine of asbestosis, so I grew up with females. I didn’t have the traditional father-son relationship, whereas with my mother there was absolute devotion from the earliest time I can remember.

“She would sit me on the table and tie my shoelaces and every day she’d say, ‘You can be anything you want to be’.

“Tragically she died when I was 28 and from then on I started to fail at things. Every time I failed, I learnt something new. I’m not a genius because if I was, I wouldn’t have to work as hard as I do – and everything has to be paid for.”

In tonight’s episode, the family’s notso- subtle words about her weight have left Agnes feeling self-conscious and frumpy. So she joins the rest of the world and his dog in a new year diet.

Meanwhile, Rory’s feeling rather good about himself after his promotion at the hair salon. But that’s soon knocked on the head when he discovers illegal drugs at work.

ALTHOUGH teen series Skins was popular from the word go, no one really expected it to last for six seasons, but then again, no one expected the cast to change on a regular basis.

Freshening it up has proved to be the key to Skins’ success – after all, if E4 had stuck to the original actors, it would no longer be a teen-based show, but a twentysomething one in which its characters were more interested in getting a mortgage than getting drunk.

The new run begins with the gang living it up in Morocco. Okay, so the villa isn’t what you could describe as palatial, but finding a stash of drugs under the floorboards takes the edge off their discomfort.

Alo also brightens everyone’s mood by finding a party to gatecrash. It’s been organised by Luke, who’s in the country on business, and who takes a shine to Franky after her relationship with Matty hits the rocks.

AFTER The Only Way Is Essex, the county is back in the spotlight in three-part documentary series Party Paramedics.

It follows the activities of the SOS Bus, a mobile medical unit paid for by some of Colchester’s pubs and clubs, and staffed by local volunteers tending to revellers who’ve injured themselves.

Among those in need of patching up in the first edition are a bloodied young man who’s been bottled while attending a stag party, an off-duty soldier with a nasty bite on his nose, and a group of girls dressed as cavewomen who’ve come a cropper during a hen night.