Mrs Brown's Boys star Brendan O'Carroll Says 2020 Will Mark The End

It is the news that will have TV critics across the land tearing their hair out: BBC One comedy Mrs Brown's Boys is here to stay.

"I have been commissioned to write another two Christmas specials and the BBC are expecting Christmas specials up until 2020," Brendan O'Carroll, who writes and stars in Mrs Brown's Boys, said in an interview with The Mirror this week.

"I am lucky enough [that] I can grow into the part and so that is nice."

The 59-year-old Dubliner also dismissed recent rumours that Mrs Brown's Boys, which is often derided by critics but was the most watched show on Christmas Day with 9.69 million viewers and 34.2 per cent of the audience share, was coming to an end. "There is absolutely no truth in the story [that] I am not writing any more Mrs Brown’s Boys. I am.

"I would be very disappointed if that [not writing more Mrs Brown's Boys] were the case, because that is the kind of fool I am. I work for 20 years to make something and as soon as it’s successful then I stop.

"My son Danny [who plays Buster Brady on the show] did an interview for a newspaper and it was a charity event at Donegal – as part of the interview to promote the event, the journalist asked what is happening with Mrs Brown's Boys and he went, ‘Oh we have finished’, but what he meant is that we’d just finished filming the Christmas special."

Despite the disastrous reviews that greeted Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie, a spin-off film released last year, O'Carroll also revealed plans for a further spin-off series or film. "The UK tour has just about sold out in 2015 and Australia in 2016 and I am working on a series at the moment but I haven’t worked out if it is a series or a movie – we are hoping to do pilots this year. I want to do a spin-off called Wash and Blow [about the salon in Mrs Brown’s Boys]."