Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a festive episode of Mrs Brown’s Boys

The long-running sitcom, created by and starring Irish comedy star Brendan O’Carroll as sharp-tongued matriarch Agnes Brown, has been beaming into homes for the past two decades.

For many, snuggling up on the sofa and putting on the Christmas Day episode is as integral a tradition as eating a mince pie.

And amongst the millions of Christmas viewers is the man himself – and his family.

“We have a tradition that the family and some of the cast, especially the Ireland-based cast, all get into pyjamas and wherever they are they drive over to our house,” O’Carroll, 68, explains.

“And we all sit in our pyjamas watching the Christmas special on Christmas night, and Jenny [his wife who plays Cathy in the show] and I of course watch it like that,” he chuckles, hiding his face in his hands. “But it becomes a pyjama party and it’s a lovely night.”

“It has become very much a part of our Christmas and I think it’s become very much a part of a lot of people’s Christmas, kind of like Morecambe and Wise was for me.”

Mrs Brown’s Boys, which airs this Christmas on BBC One, has had remarkable staying power in the saturated world of television, amassing millions of fans in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere.

Did O’Carroll ever suspect that he would become a Christmas staple? “Absolutely not,” he says. “I swear to God. You know my mother always used to say to me, ‘You’re such a smart kid, Brendan. I can see in the future you’re either going to be prime minister or in prison, one of the two.’

“So I’m just delighted that I’m neither of those. That I get to be on Christmas Day, it’s beyond – you know people say to me, ‘God you must be living your dream.’ I am so far past my dreams that it’s just not right. My cup runneth over. It really does.”

And he is deeply grateful to the Mammy who has filled his cup. On what he’d buy Mrs Brown for Christmas, O’Carroll starts with “a hot water bottle and a bottle of Irish whiskey” but that soon spirals and he spends the next five minutes waxing lyrical about the fortune the character has reaped on his family.

“Honestly, I’d buy her a villa in Spain and a Rolls Royce and get her her own jet so she could fly there any time,” he says, “because my god that widow has changed my life. She’s put my kids through school, she’s put my grandkids through school. She’s bought them houses.

“If you look at Dermot who plays grandad, he was my window cleaner. Now he has got the life he deserves, that everyone deserves. Pepsi, who plays Mark, he was my roadie. My son, my daughter, my sister, my wife, my sister-in-law – we’ve all milked this widow dry.” The Christmas special comes to BBC One over the festive period.