I saw a Mrs Browns boys joke while sitting in a pub. It was about some lothario who insisted he take off Mrs Browns knickers with his teeth. The punchline was that she had to take them out of her purse and put them back on so he could.

This is a fairly standard bawdy end of the pier gag working class gag. I think I have heard Jim Davidson make this or a very similar joke (I was channel surfing honest).

Brendan O'Carroll isn't my cup of tea but from what I've seen

1. He has brilliant comic timing. As do Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning so I'm not claiming thats the be all and end of comedy.

2. He is doing similar jokes to Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning for what I believe to be a similar audience. This isn't an audience who strokes their chins wisely at Stewart Lee deconstructions of middle class mores. Its an audience who like knicker and fart jokes.

Now even if I dont like watching O'Carroll I know no one who doesn't think hes a damn site better then Manning and Davidson. Davidson in some ways seems to have reformed, warning Daily mail link. He mightn't be funny to me but I've heard no one accuse him of being racist, violently homophobic or massively misogynist. I should say that Les Dawson had a similar line in womens clothes and fart jokes in the 70's and I dont think his humour was racist or homophobic.

tl:dr I defend O'Carroll on the snobbish grounds that the people who used to do this sort of humour for this large audience were racist, homophobic, misogynist assholes and he AFAIK isn't