Mrs Brown's Boys 'paid in t-shirts'

Brendan O’Carroll has revealed that he was paid in t-shirts for the first incarnation of Mrs Brown’s Boys.

The Irish comedian, who writes and stars in the BBC One comedy, said it started out as a radio show on Irish station RTE1 after he (a struggling stand-up comedian at the time) heard there was a spot going free on the schedule.

“I said I had a show, I don’t know why, but the producer asked me what it was called and I said ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ off the top of my head,” said the 55-year-old comedian, who hails from Finglas in Ireland, the same Dublin suburb as U2’s The Edge.

“And I said, ‘It’s about this widow who has six kids and they’re all grown adults but she treats them as if they’re five. She’s a typical Irish mammy, she won’t let go, they’ll be tied to the apron strings for the rest of their life.

“There’s one who wants to be a priest, one who’s in and out of prison and – I swear to God – I was winging it as I went along,” he said.

The show was commissioned but, as the channel didn’t have a budget for comedy, O’Carroll was paid in T-shirts.

“They said, ‘Say if we gave you 500 T-shirts a week, we’ll print Mrs Brown’s Boys on them, then you can sell them for £5 a go, that’ll give you £2,500’. So we took the deal and got paid in T-shirts,” he added.

:: Mrs Brown’s Boys is on BBC One on Mondays.