Mrs. Brown's Boys made the headlines for all the wrong reasons the other day after several of the show's cast members were named in the Paradise Papers leak, exposing their financial dealings.

Fiona Delany (nee O'Carroll), her husband Martin Delany and Patrick Houlihan had been accused of sending their wages from the show to a company in Mauritius and then drawing it out as 'loans' to avoid paying tax.

Although Houlihan has been the only actor to comment publicly on the affair, now Brendan O'Carroll - Fiona Delany's father and creator of the show - has spoken out to criticise the BBC's Panorama investigation, who attempted to confront Delany at BBC Scotland, where the show is recorded.

O'Carroll told the Irish Sun that they had 'ambushed' his daughter, saying "They scared the life out of her. It seems to be an effort to tarnish the show. We’ve done nothing wrong… Fiona was in tears. I spent the whole day comforting her.

“She is not an oligarch laundering money through Greek banks, nor does she deal in the arm trade, deal drugs or traffic people. She has never committed a crime in her life, she doesn’t have a private yacht or own a collection of luxury cars. She drives a Kia people carrier which is necessary if you have four toddlers."

He added that none of the three had done anything illegal. "Everybody that featured in that show did what they did for completely different reasons," he said. "Paddy and Fiona wanted to regularise their income over a period of time so they could pay tax over a longer period of time. What’s really important is that nothing they did was illegal. In the case of Fiona, Paddy, and Marty, not one penny of their BBC money went into that fund. 

“Panorama said that they are paid offshore. That’s bollocks. Their fees are paid to a UK agency called ­ProFid who represent them. They invoice us and we pay their fees to Profid who organise whatever they organise with them to give them their monthly salary. In my daughter Fiona’s case I know she paid £200,000 in tax last year. At the time, Fiona was ambushed by the BBC guy in Glasgow she had just done a year-long audit and had a clearance certificate. All her loans were declared.”

He said that they were not going to pursue legal action. “I’m not ­litigious. I don’t believe in fruitless litigation. We have a big family and a big crew everybody is healthy and well. We will go back to work and be fine. No-one died.”