How I was nearly a Late Late Toy Show child star - and what I learned
Gay Byrne and Charlotte Church on the set of the 1998 edition of the Late Late Toy Show: a life lesson for a future Examiner staffer
The inevitable late-November talk of RTÉ’s seasonal institution, The Late Late Toy Show, stirs up some vivid, if somewhat rose-tinted memories and conflicting emotions in your writer.
What I remember of the year 1998 is caught in the overall blur of life happening for a ten-year-old child: self-consciousness happens suddenly, and with excruciating detail; the comforts of childhood start to engender something of an over-familiarity; and the first bits of adolescence, like peer-pressure, culture and consumption, make themselves apparent around you to varying degrees.
That year, I’d been sick with meningitis, resulting in ten days of a hospital stay at CUH.
I remember people visiting from home, my Dad bringing me ten whole packets of France ‘98 soccer stickers, getting an undoubtedly teacher-mandated shout out on The Den’s Big Bus Quiz from classmates, and helping a medical student with some of her work by mentioning the glass tumbler test during a practical exam. Funny, isn’t it, what sticks in the mind?
After a difficult year, then, my Mam says she saw the callouts on telly for auditions for The Late Late Toy Show, still a family favourite in our household, despite my Dad’s concerns about dangling new toys in front of a nation of kids, not all of whom are the lucky recipients of same, for various reasons.
Precocious children are half the fun of the whole thing, of course, and my Mam saw fit to put her voracious reader’s name into the pot for the book slot, perhaps half-expecting not to hear back at all.
Imagine my own surprise, then, when I was told I’d be taking a call from RTÉ after school, a massive event for those of us that were still in two-channel land at home.
Two calls followed with production staffers at Montrose. The first bore the kind of questions you’d ask a child about their likes and dislikes, favourite school subjects, and things they like to read about.
They showed an interest in me, and explained how a live broadcast works, how all the magic happened. It was as much insight into this whole other world as my little head could handle, and I was bursting after it.
In the second round of interviews, I stumbled over my words, perhaps thrown by being asked about books on anything other than my own fixations at the time - Manchester United and PlayStation specifically - and my Mam keeping careful watch behind me, in the hallway of our house. I was told they’d be back in touch.
They were, and while I was at school one day in October, my Mam got the word that I wouldn’t be brought up to Dublin, after making it to the last ten kids for consideration: a process that I was told involved pulling names out of a hat, possibly to preserve my own feelings.
I remember being matter-of-fact about it: my parents told me I’d done a good job, and some books were in the post, signed by Gay Byrne, that still occupy a place somewhere on our home bookshelves.
The week of the Toy Show that year, though, I remember it hitting me like a ton of bricks, in the still very inward-looking internal language of a pre-teen: ‘That could have been me on telly, Friday night’.
I’d managed my expectations on my parents’ advice, and remember keeping schtum as best I could on how I felt, so as not to ruin my younger sister Clionadh’s buzz, but on the night, I just couldn’t.
A shame: I hadn't realised it would be one of Uncle Gaybo's last Toy Show appearances.
I just remember going to bed, and tossing and turning, upset, before drifting off.
I didn’t watch it the following year, or any year since, into adulthood, bar fleeting looks if it happened to be on in the background, or the odd viral-video story that’s emerged in more recent years.
It's not 'for me'. The Toy Show has moved away from gentle, warm anarchy, overseen in Gaybo's grandfatherly way, and into a crystalline, permanent signpost for the procession of the Christmas season; a rallying point for extended families in non-Covid times, and a comforter for those who left Ireland during the recession, helping them winter out those first years abroad.
It’s been twenty-two years, and 2020 has been difficult on all of us, as the ongoing Covid-19 crisis robs us of the familiar rituals and the company of so many of our loved ones, all in the name of public health and social responsibility.
We’ve spent the year indoors, practically, and all while life has proceeded on around us: loved ones departing and arriving in extraordinary times, businesses closing or adapting to new realities, social circles shrinking in some way and expanding in others.
It’s easy to cast a cold eye on the Toy Show, and we still have to have the national conversation about the ins and outs of teasing kids with the latest gizmos and gadgets, at a time when social and economic inequality is set to be widened further by the crisis’ impact on families and households.
But in a year when the return of the cast of The Den for a limited six-week run reduced your writer (32¾ years old) to a bleary-eyed heap on the couch, no-one can be blamed for latching on to what brings them comfort.
Now, if only they'd make those Zuppy teddies again.
