This is followed by a second musical number – a performance of Elton John’s Can You Feel The Love Tonight, accompanied by footage of children in hospital with parents and medical staff. Tubridy invites him to ring a bell marking his illness-free status. Finn Ryan (8) from Waterford shares his Lego collection before revealing he has recovered from cancer. Donations pour in tonight, seemingly causing the Revolut app to crash.
The Toy Show Appeal is back as well, having raised €6.6 million for charities last year. This host of Christmas present seems determined, moreover, to live up to his promise to banish memories of the past 18 months of lockdowns. So he is elementally in his element as he bounds among the soft toys and stacks of children’s books. Having fronted the Xmas showpiece across the past 12 years, Tubridy is a veteran of Toy Shows, naff sweaters and hyper-specific Disney homages. Opening sequence. Photograph: Andres PovedaĬallum (11) & Jackson Kieran (5) from Finglas Dublin on The Late Late Toy Show 2021. There is magic in the air, is there not? You are invited to stay and play with us for as long as you want.” “There’s no telling what could happen here tonight. “The children of Ireland have taken over,” says the presenter, recovering his breath and swapping the animal outfit for a festive shirt.
It’s not even 10pm and already we’ve achieved Peak Festive Tubridy.
If you’re playing a Toy Show drinking game, feel free to drain the entire bottle immediately. You can travel the world, meet strange and interesting people – but only on RTÉ in late November will you encounter a middle-aged man done up like a member of the mongoose family leading a dozen children through a repertoire of wild-life based songs. With this, the Toy Show starts in earnest. And now Tubridy is done up like a sort of meerkat and is emerging from beneath a row of giant nodding giraffes to the strains of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. The logic behind his wardrobe is never unpacked as we instead whiz over to Montrose Studio Four. So he’s dressed as a …handyman? From the 1950s? Oh and there’s Ryan Tubridy, wearing a flatcap and carrying a ladder. They’re Toy Show Kids (from the Spotlight Stage School). Don’t worry – they aren’t Dickensian scamps up to late night mischief. Then the camera moves outside, where more children are hanging about. Today it has become RTÉ’s big show-piece - Irish television’s answer to the Oscars and the John Lewis ad rolled into one.Īnd, as the nation gathers for a rare shared moment in a world of binge viewing, Toy Show 2021 opens with a pre-recorded segment in Canon Mooney Gardens in Ringsend, Dublin, where a little girl listens to Wham’s Last Christmas and then dons a colourful head-dress in tribute to Disney’s the Lion King
The Toy Show started off as Gay Byrne in a festive jumper trying to understand the appeal of Cabbage Patch Kids. It’s an appropriately bonkers end to a Toy Show that, as per its Lion King theme, swings, whooping-monkey style from hilarity to absurdity and all the way back (and that’s just Tubridy’s outfits). Then he sits down with Tubridy and two child rappers for a game of “Pencil Nose”. “I love all the costumes you’ve done.”Įd the Red has popped in to sing his song Leave Your Life with a kids’ choir from Cork. “You know what, this is my first time watching it in full,” says Ireland’s second favourite male singer (let’s be honest - we were all secretly hoping for Garth Brooks). Sheeran is the surprise guest at the end of a marathon evening of toys, songs and Ryan Tubridy dressed as a meerkat.
Either a rift has opened in the space-time continuum or it’s the Late Late Toy Show 2021 (RTÉ One, 9.35pm). It’s just past midnight, and Ed Sheeran is drawing a child’s face using a pen attached to his nose.