'I’ll have a few beers after': Behind the scenes of the Toy Show with Ryan Tubridy

It’s the most wonderful time of RTÉ's year, when everyone stays up past their bedtime, and Ryan Tubridy dresses up and acts the eejit while young people take centre stage. The Toy Show presenter spoke with Donal O’Keeffe about his own inner child, his salary, Adam King, and the role of media in social justice

Ryan Tubridy embraces the Toy Show each year with gusto. Picture Andres Poveda

“I have never left my own inner child too far behind,” laughs Ryan Tubridy when asked the secret to his presenting The Late Late Toy Show. “I didn’t leave it behind in childhood, I actually dragged that kid kicking and screaming into my forties.”

The original host of the Toy Show, Gay Byrne, never seemed able to muster much more than an air of baffled condescension toward any child who wasn’t a fully paid-up member of the Billie Barry Kids, and his successor, smartest boy in class Pat Kenny, always looked about to ask, “And what is this ‘fun’ of which you speak?”