How I was nearly a Late Late Toy Show child star - and what I learned

A childhood brush with the Late Late Toy Show was an early life lesson in setting and managing expectations, acting as a milestone in Examiner man Mike McGrath-Bryan’s upbringing in the 1990s

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.