This year’s Late Late Toy Show is going to look ‘radically’ different

Late Late Show presenter, Ryan Tubridy spoke at the RTÉ virtual autumn launch, all about what viewers can expect from this year’s Late Late Toy Show.

“I think, without question, that it will be the most important Toy Show that we’ve ever done – for obvious reasons,” Ryan said.

“The kids have been so good. They’ve had the weirdest year of their lives and it is absolutely up to us to make the sun shine for them again. We are determined and excited.

Ryan went on to talk about the extra precautions they’re taking, given the COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions. “We’re operating at the moment with the view that everything will be social-distanced. Everything is, as we know it now, in terms of Covid rules.”

“I don’t anticipate that changing between now and Christmas to be quite honest. I don’t see some kind of miraculous move towards people gathering. We made a decision quite early on that there will be no audience.”

Ryan admitted he was worried about the show’s lack of audience atmosphere, saying, “The idea of doing a Toy Show with no audience is very daunting because you feed off of that. But I feel quite supported by the public and their patience and that’ll help fuel the madness.”

He confirmed, “It’s going to be a radically different type of Toy Show. The opening of the Toy Show is going to be radically different. My character is radically different. The song is radically different… this is going to be a Toy Show like no other.”

Will this mean that there won’t be any of the usual ‘One for everyone in the audience!’ exclamations though? Ryan reassured us that they would come up with a suitable alternative to tackle every element of the show and make it suitable for a COVID-19 world. When someone suggested delivering gifts to frontline workers, Ryan replied, “That’s exactly along the lines of where we’d be inclined to go.”

“I mentioned in the middle of August that applications for the show were open and they had about 1,000 entries in the course of 24 hours. There’s a hunger for the Toy Show this year that is very different for obvious reasons,” the presenter claimed.

Ryan also hinted at this year’s theme, suggesting that it will be “delicious, and different.”