The Irish comedian apologised for a racist Mrs Brown joke on Friday night's show.

The star told host Patrick Kielty that he was 'disgusted' with himself over a racist joke he was about to tell during a read through of one of his upcoming Christmas specials.

While RTÉ received no formal complaints over the segment, 14 individuals did contact the broadcaster express negative feedback, with one viewer emailing them to praise O'Carroll.

The Finglas native explained himself: "I like to poke fun at particular people who marginalise other people. When Mrs Brown found out her son was gay, I showed how she didn't understand it. She now knows her son is gay and accepts it, but she doesn't know what gay is."

Additionally, he discussed Mrs Brown's naivety regarding racism: "I wanted to poke fun at intergenerational racism, and how Mrs Brown doesn't get racism. She doesn't know what racism is. [The joke] was kinda like, 'Eenie meenie minie mo catch a -,' and then Kathy interrupts and says, 'Mammy you can't say that'. We went on with the rest of the read through."

O'Carroll reflected: "The next day we went into rehearsals and got a note from the director about the runner who was at the read through. The read throughs are about finding out what you can and can't say, there's always a BBC executive there. Everyone laughed and at the end of it we clapped.

“Then I found out he had been offended. So I immediately sent him an email apologising, I don't want to offend anybody, I don't want to be that guy."

Showing his regret on the Late Late Show, he added: "Yeah, that's why I apologised. I completely get it."

Despite a stellar line-up including Paul Mescal, U2 guitarist Adam Clayton, Glamour Editor Samantha Barry and Graham Norton, RTÉ revealed that Friday night's chat show was watched by an average audience of 309,000 people on RTE One and RTE One + 1.

The ratings loss was suffered due to hundreds of thousands of viewers tuning in to watch Ireland take on Argentina in the Autumn Nations series.