Here are the 13 reasons why I hate the Late Late Toy Show (2025)

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by Everymum / 4 days ago

Look it, it's not you, it's me. I wish you all a happy Late Late Toy Show. And if anyone's looking for me, I'll be in a space where nobody can hear me scream.

Here are the 13 reasons why I hate the Late Late Toy Show (1)

Oh, so you thought the Late Late Toy Show was a sacred cultural institution loved by every Irish person? Think again.

While there are hundreds of thousands of adults and children around the country with their PJs and popcorn already laid out for Friday when ringmaster Patrick Kielty opens the show, there are a few Toy Show Grinches out there as well…

Clearly, the Irish Daily Mail’s Fiona Looney won’t be among those watching as as she spells out the 13 reasons why she hates the Late Late Toy Show:

One

I’m basically jealous of people who, unlike me, either grew up watching the annual and peculiarly Irish televisual spectacle that is the Late Late Toy Show or at least grew up watching its less festive counterpart on the other weeks of the year.

Due to a draconian and brutal bedtime regime in my childhood home, which was never relaxed, even at weekends, I never saw the Late Late Show at all until I was well into my late teens, by which time I had somehow managed to confuse Gay Byrne – a familiar voice from his morning radio show, with another presenter called Morgan O’Sullivan. Thereafter, I could never entirely shake a vague suspicion that Gay was an imposter.

Here are the 13 reasons why I hate the Late Late Toy Show (2)

Two

Even if I had been allowed to watch the Toy Show, it didn’t start until 1975 – when it was a half-hour segment at the END of the regular show – by which historic time I was nine-years-old and arguably a bit old for all that (as Santa himself actually pointed out to me that same year when I went to see him in the passport photo booth in Rathfarnham Shopping Centre that doubled as a winter wonderland in the 1970s.) So I’ve always had the sense that The Toy Show just wasn’t meant for one as beautiful as me.

Three

Referencing numbers 1 and 2 above, if you are already an adult when you see your first Late Late Toy Show, it messes with your head.

Four

It’s basically a two-hour long ad for toys. Have other people not noticed that?

Five

Some of the children on it are weird. I’m sure most of them are perfectly pleasant at home, but some of them get a sort of red mist in the presence of TV cameras that makes them either lose focus on the job in hand entirely or comport themselves like miniature grown-ups, alluding to a colourful love life or possession of road frontage.

Here are the 13 reasons why I hate the Late Late Toy Show (3)

Six

I like Ryan Tubridy both on a personal and professional basis, but I used to resent the way he’d talk about The Toy Show for about six months before and five months afterwards, with an enthusiasm that suggested that if you didn’t get it, there was something wrong with you.

Seven

Somebody suggested this year that The Late Late Toy Show should become an annual day long event/party. God in heaven.

Eight

Referencing 4, above, even my children realised very quickly that there’s no narrative arc whatsoever in the show. To give me some credit, I introduced my young children to the show in the conventional way, encouraging excitement and popcorn and pyjamas and the like, but it didn’t take them long to start losing track of which bits were actual ad breaks and which were just toy flogathons. By the last half an hour, my children would be asking if they could go to bed.

Nine

Or I presume they were. By that late stage, I was usually fast asleep on the sofa having fallen into a bottle of wine to fortify me for the gruelling experience ahead.

Ten

Ed Sheeran once appeared to a girl who’d gone to the same school as I did on it. In fairness, that was pretty cool.

Here are the 13 reasons why I hate the Late Late Toy Show (4)

Eleven

As all parents know – even if there seems to be an omerta of silence about it at this time of year – one of the greatest endurance tests of parenthood is sitting through other children’s party pieces at school concerts. On Late Late Toy Show night, you can relive the thrill of that without leaving your sofa.

Twelve

The studio audience are only there to get their hands on the one for everyone in the audience free stuff. Surely it’s obvious that a show centred around playing with toys should have children in the audience. Why is it only adults? Seriously, has nobody else ever thought that that’s odd?

Thirteen

Sometimes, the producers book ‘celebrities’ to surprise the children demonstrating the toys. Often, the children do not know who these people are. Which is also pretty cool, now that I think about it.

Look it, it’s not you, it’s me. I wish you all a happy Toy Show. And if anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be in a space where nobody can hear me scream.

Here are the 13 reasons why I hate the Late Late Toy Show (2025)
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