BACK in the Seventies and Eighties, we couldn’t get enough of fake breasts, Judy Plum wigs and support hose so thick they could easily turn the fan belt on a tractor.

Yes, we loved our comedians who loved to drag up and make us laugh; Dick Emery, Danny La Rue, Stanley Baxter, Lily Savage. . .And then later the Little Britain duo emerged. And we’ve always had our panto stars, of course.

Ironically, in British society homophobia was rife and those of our dragged-up comics who happened to be gay kept their sexuality private. (Scotland didn’t make homosexuality legal until 1980).

But the world has veered in a different direction. Drag can be simply a celebration of a man dressing up as a woman, as Rue Paul’s hugely successful Drag Race has proved.

Drag is continually breaking boundaries, becoming a global phenomenon and being adopted by mainstream society. And there has been an increase in live drag events across the UK, allowing for a blurring of the lines between masculinity and femininity.

And now, thankfully, that world can sit comfortably alongside drag comedy. If there was a worry that the drag comics would come under criticism for making fun of the female form, that hasn’t happened.

Britain’s biggest drag comedian is of course Brendan O’Carroll, the Dubliner who has taken his Mrs Brown creation across the English-speaking world, and conquered much of it.

Of course, the likes of O’Carroll, Emery and Baxter aren’t trying to convince as women.

They each offer(ed) up caricatures, heightened versions, their comedy creations allowed to behave in heightened form.

Baxter indeed based much of his characterisation on his own mother, Bessie. “I used the fact that she would have loved to have been a film star,” he says. “And when you have a ‘film star’ living up a Glasgow close it allows you to have all sorts of fun.”

O’Carroll also based his Mrs Brown creation on his own mother. “She was a powerful, no-nonsense women who got things done,” he said of the former Taoiseach politician “And she kept a family together.”

The Irish comedian battled for 20 years to become successful before Mrs Brown was discovered at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow, by a TV producer tipped off by Rab C. Nesbitt creator Ian Pattison.

Since then Mrs Brown’s Boys has gone on to win 5 BAFTAs, 4 National Television Awards, 3 TV Choice Awards and take the twice bankrupt writer/performer’s bank account into a multi-million pound celebration.

Now, Brendan O’Carroll’s homage to his mother is back with Mrs Brown D’Live Show: The Tour. “It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever written,” says O’Carroll with characteristic modesty. “Even I laugh – and I know what’s coming next!”

The show is a mix of musical, with eight songs, and a storyline . . . of sorts. But judge for yourself if it’s the funniest thing ever.

Following on from his Mrs Brown film storyline, Dublin’s stout-hearted stallholders have won their court case against developers who wished to close Moore Street market.

But where to find the €75,000 legal costs? The matriarch of the fruit stall, has a plum idea: put on a musical and watch the dosh roll in. A sentiment the writer himself wholeheartedly agrees with.

Mrs Brown D’Live Show, Edinburgh Playhouse, July 15-17

THE SHOW must go on, right? No matter what happens the performer has to push their worries aside and get their act together. . .

Glasgow drag star Kevin Brannigan has also created a huge comedy character in Big Angie. However, Brannigan’s resolve is being tested to the limit these days.

Having found himself signed up to star on the stage as part of the Merchant City Festival in Glasgow, no sooner was the East Ender ready to announce details on his social media account, than hackers broke in and captured his domain.

And the result has left him higher than a eunuch – and dryer than a freshly talcumed bottom. “I was hacked,” he reveals, “losing not only 31, 000 plus followers but content from Big Angie’s earliest days, tonnes and tonnes of feedback from people all over the world, and nostalgic memories and private messages I couldn’t get back.”

Brannigan is certainly down. But not out. Spurred on from the success of his Beauty and the Beef comedy sketches he wrote for the BBC, he is determined to let the world know Big Angie won’t lay down, unless a lot of superlager is involved.

And his latest show, Big Angie: Me, the Polis & the Priest has to be seen. “It downloaded into my brain as I carried my messages across the street,” he recalls. “I saw it all so vividly: the title, the story, the beginning, the middle, the end and all the bits in between.”

Now, in the process of rebuilding his social media page, he has to let people know it’s on. “That social media was my beating heart, but I’m determined to kick start it once again,” he says, in stoic voice.

Kevin Brannigan, The Old Fruitmarket, July 28.