The world hasn't learned from 1916, says Brendan O'Carroll

A century after the uprising, which saw a bloody battle on the streets of Dublin as Irishmen and women fought for independence, the star and creator of Mrs Brown’s Boys has taken a personal journey to discover more about his own family’s connection to the conflict.

In a new programme, the Irish actor and author explores the story of his uncles Liam and Peadar, who took part in the rebellion - and finds that Liam once ordered the killing of a British solder and went on to radicalise others in a high-security prison camp.

He told the Press Association: “I was absolutely stunned at the idea that all those that were arrested over the rising, 2,000 plus of them, ended up in Frongoch prison camp, which was built really as a German prison camp for Germans - but they ended up there.

“So they radicalised. They put them all in one place, and they started running courses on how to build radios, they actually wrote chapters and courses and gave them to groups of men on how to use flying columns.

“We should have learned from that, but we didn’t, because we have places like Guantanamo Bay, where we get them all together and put them all in one place, and go: ‘Be good, okay? Don’t be teaching each other things’.”

He added: “I think in many ways, we have continually repeated ourselves in parts of history.”

In a 2014 edition of Who Do You Think You Are?, O’Carroll learnt that his republican grandfather Peter had been assassinated by a British undercover agent in 1920 during the Irish War of Independence.

Brendan O’Carroll: My Family At War airs on BBC Two on Wednesday at 9pm.