The Young Ones and Blackadder writer Ben Elton has rowed in behind Brendan O'Carroll's Mrs Brown's Boys, describing it as "quality comedy".
Elton showed his support for the polarising sitcom phenomenon while delivering the inaugural Ronnie Barker Comedy Lecture, which will be shown on BBC One tonight at 10.35pm.
In his passionate defence of the live sitcom genre, Elton hit out at people for treating it with "thoughtless contempt" and "snobbery".
He said the live sitcom is "not a tired and cheesy format at all" and then went on to praise Mrs Brown's Boys.
"Mrs Brown is quality comedy, not to everyone's taste of course, but what work of art of any value could possibly be to everyone's taste?" he said.
"It's an exuberant, superbly executed celebration of what, for want of a better word, you might call big comedy. The comedy of the perfect theatrical double take."
Elton said he did not think his own comedy classic The Young Ones would survive if it was launched in the present day.
"Had [characters] Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike arrived in a world of instant opinions, formed and tweeted while a show is actually still on air I don't think they'd have been given the grace to grow on people as they did," he continued.
"I'd plea that when we write about comedy, be it in a newspaper or in a tweet, we shouldn't leap to judgment. I don't think any comedy should be judged on its first outing, particularly a sitcom, which by its nature is designed for the long haul."
