Why Mrs Brown’s Boys is the Brexit of Christmas comedy

Aidan Smith admits he used to sneer at Mrs Brown’s Boys along with other snobby viewers among the metropolitan elite

We are creatures of habit and at Christmas we are synthetic-fur, highly-flammable, maiden aunt-gifting, table-display reindeers of habit. So that is why, right after the election and the resumption of normal life, I dug deep in the cellar for the naffest of Yuletide bawbees, installing them in their usual place.

That is why, too, I headed uptown to Jenners to gawp at the tree. With the duchess of Princes Street set to hoick up her petticoats and quit the scene, I was probably doing it for the last time. For Edinburgh Department Store Boy, this was quite a moment. My first-ever ride on an escalator was in Goldbergs. Haircuts were downstairs in PT’S. My glam-rock clobber came from C&A. The Forsyth’s windows on international rugby weekends were always a must-see. New girlfriends were traditionally met underneath the clock at Binns, at least when they bothered to turn up. That PT’S baldy in the style of Slade guitarist Dave Hill, snipped high across the forehead as if in readiness for a frontal lobotomy, was probably a poor choice.

The tree was stunning but simple, ceiling-high but modestly decorated, an antidote to the over-christmasisation of the rest of Princes Street and a reminder of quieter times. Was a trip to view it really once the sum total of festive entertainment? Yes it was. Just like how, regarding entertainment indoors, there used to be only two television channels. Strange but true.

With such a superabundance of gogglebox choice these days, you wouldn’t think Mrs Brown’s Boys securing a plum spot in the Christmas Day schedules would be any kind of big deal. But it is. It’s always a Christmas Day show and that’s always a wishbone of contention for some. A certain kind of sophisticated, sneering, snobby viewership has continued to rubbish Mrs Brown’s Boys, and laughed at the sitcom’s fans and its obvious, old-fashioned humour. I know because I’d count myself as one of these snobs.

None of this remotely bothers Brendan O’carroll who plays the eponymous Irish mammy and who every year around this time is invited to explain the bizarre secret of the show’s success. “Honestly, I just put on my dress and my tits and go out and make people laugh,” O’carroll said in an interview yesterday. “But if they don’t like it – feck ’em.”

Maybe, though, we who think ourselves above this sort of base comedy have to accept that other folk like different things. Perhaps we should undergo the soul-searching that is taking place in whatever has replaced the old smoke-filled rooms of Labour’s high command. There, the party’s metropolitan elite are having to come to terms with harsh truths: other folk think them out of touch. Other folk reckon they’re, as Mrs Brown would say, up their own erses. Other folk like Brexit.

We who nod knowingly at postmodern comedies and anti-comedies and clever-clever comedies without gags cannot point at the great Mrs Brown rump of this land and shout: “Idiots!” Similarly Labour leadership hopefuls cannot say this about the voters the party have lost, those who’ve jumped over the Red Wall and into the gruff embrace of Boris Johnson, never one to pass up the opportunity of a surprise knee-squeeze.

We may think we know better; we may think we like better. We may believe Fleabag to be the greatest thing since artisan-baked bread, but is it really? The hype surround