Mrs Brown and Maw Broon do singalong

THE BROONS stage show is currently touring Scotland while Mrs Brown’s Boys, starring Brendan O’Carroll, will return in the spring. But in writing this a thought arrives like a swipe with a wet tea towel across the face: aren’t Mrs Brown and Maw Broon one and the same?

It’s not simply the fact they share the same name. The parallels with the Irish and the Scots mammies are almost undeniable.

Both are strong-willed matriarchs hell-bent on holding their huge families together at all cost. We get to witness this, for example, in the new Broons stage show, the central plot being the chaos that ensues when it’s learned Maggie is to be married and leave 10 Glebe Street. Will this fracture the Broons? We’ve also had similar Mrs Brown plot lines over the years when son Mark looked to be emigrating to Australia. There is more connective tissue between these Celtic tigers. Neither is a card-carrying feminist and both are permanently attached to aprons, the drawstring being the umbilical cord to their domestic lives.

But the trope sees both believe implicitly they are stronger than the male, continually pointing out the silliness of the opposite sex to the point, if it were reversed, it would be borderline misogyny. Paw Broon is seriously henpecked. The late Redser Brown is continually trashed even though he is now with his maker.

Both Brown and Broon have sexually frustrated daughters, in Maggie and Cathy. Both have gay sons, in Mrs Brown’s case Rory and Maw Broon’s Hen, (the moustache an indicator, although Hen is yet to officially emerge from the closet).

The ladies are both great gossips, reliant on re-spreading information. And they share a humour device, both highly dependent upon confusion and Chinese whispers; the Bairn overhears Paw Broon saying he’s buying a horse, and the family turn up to see it is in fact a clothes horse. Agnes Brown overhears her family talk about her being on her last legs and perhaps going to a home would be the better option, only to discover they’ve been talking about her aged pooch, Spartacus.

Of course, Maw Broon has never sworn in her life, unless you count the odd ‘jings’, which is most likely not a cuss, while Mrs Brown spurts out invective like her mouth were a tennis ball machine. (You suspect the Broons, being from Dundee, would have used sweary words, given their working class upbringing but, as the cartoon strip is aimed at kids from five to 95, it wouldn’t make the panels.)

Yes, the ladies share much. Their homes are almost bare, the furniture pre-war, and both live in almost timeless worlds. Yet the pair can be rather pretentious at times, taking on posh voices when the occasion calls for it.

Now both are featured in touring stage shows, which means both women will make lots of money for their producers. And Broons and Browns have spawned cook books, biographies.

But what makes these women successful in cultural terms is they make us reflect on the true values of life, of family and friends and and looking after those closest to you. And in today’s world both are ever more relevant.

‘‘ Both continually point out the silliness of the opposite sex to the point, if it were reversed, it would be borderline misogyny