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The programme, first shown on BBC One in 2011, has had four series and has long been a fixture on the BBC’s Christmas TV schedules.

It won a National TV Award last month for best comedy.

The slapstick show stars O’Carroll as a foul-mouthed Irish matriarch, who is “mammy” to her surrounding family and friends, who gather for laughter and tears in her kitchen and living room.

It has a pantomime theatricality to it, featuring shots of the audience and including moments when the actors corpse – a term used to describe breaking character and laughing – and ad-lib on stage.

Last month, at the National TV Awards, O’Carroll told The Sun, external: “It’s hard to believe this Christmas Day episode will be our 50th episode.”

He added: “I think we’re going to be doing another mini series for April, but whenever the BBC broadcast them.”

Speaking about the award, he told the newspaper it was “tremendous, to get this award is our sixth”.

“It’s voted for by the audience and viewers. This is the icing on the cake it’s amazing,” he added.

Although it is not necessarily a universal hit with TV critics, the show has proved to be an enduring success with its fans.

Dick Fiddy, archive TV programmer at the BFI, told the BBC in 2020 he thought it “thrived in the gulf between critics and audiences… because there’s a certain section of the audience that feels disenfranchised by modern comedy; an audience that enjoyed the broad, double entendre comedy of On The Buses and Are You Being Served?”

O’Carroll has said the success of the show has been, at least in part, down to an audience” that has felt “left behind”, as TV comedy has evolved and changed.