Outnumbered Christmas special takes emotional turn with unwelcome health revelation

The episode's emotional storyline will see Pete trying to tell his kids, Jake, Ben and Karen, the news, and Dennis reflected on the intention of its inclusion in a recent Q&A for the show.

Dennis said: "Every family pretty much has had experience of that kind of stuff. And we've had, not within my nuclear family, but my dad had cancer at 66 and survived until he was 88. It has touched everyone, really.

"And I'm pleased to have done it, actually. Partially because I got nabbed once by Prostate Cancer UK, and I'm now one of the faces of 'go and get your prostate cancer self-check'.

"So, as well as it being a story which resonates, I'm sort of delighted if it means that anybody goes and gets a check. That's a sort of little victory, isn't it? Because everybody has been touched by cancer in some way. So, essentially, no research [is] needed because it's such a common thing."

The show's writers, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, also spoke about including the storyline, explaining that the show always dealt with serious topics including dementia, death and homophobia, even if fans often remember it most for "the delightful children".

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Jenkin said: "We dealt with [those topics] through how parents explain it to their children, quite often. This is the same, except that the children are considerably larger. So Dad has to find a way of explaining that he’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

"It is something we’ve experienced, but I think, more importantly, nearly every family in the country has experienced it in similar forms, including the royal family.

"There’s still a stigma attached to the word cancer, and we just wanted to show how very, very normal it is, and how the Brockmans dealt with it with warmth and love and especially humour. Because I think that’s a very British way of dealing with that sort of stuff. And to show how you can make a really joyful and funny Christmas special."

Hamilton added: "Humour is an essential survival skill for people to get through situations like that. The statistic currently is that one in two people get cancer if you live long enough. And I suppose, for us, the key to the episode is not so much the cancer or what kind of cancer it is, it's not about the cancer, it’s about the conversation.

"That’s the conversation that, as Guy says, happens in millions of homes up and down the country, and we've both had experience of that conversation, and we wanted to depict it in an honest and funny way.

"To be honest, it could just as easily have been, Pete could have sat his family down and told them he was due to have a heart op or something. And there will be cancer patients, probably millions of them, who watch the show, people who are undergoing treatment for cancer.

"And I think our hope will be that they find it reassuring or comforting in some way. Obviously, every individual is different in some way, but at least the show gives off a signal that they aren't alone. Because the show has always been about shared familial experiences."

Alongside this storyline, the special will also see Jake struggling to balance working from home while raising a child of his own, while Ben plans a major trip and Karen deals with frustrations in both her professional and personal life.

The Outnumbered Christmas special will air on BBC One and iPlayer on Thursday 26th December at 9:40pm.

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