Does hating the Toy Show mean I’m not really Irish?

MY name is Fiona Looney and I hate The Late Late Toy Show. There, I’ve finally said it aloud. After years of denial, confusion, guilt and feelings of inadequacy and failure – both on a national and personal level – I’m finally confronting my demons. I’ve really, really tried, but I just don’t get The Toy Show at all.

I recognise that part of the problem comes from arriving late to The Toy Show party – and carrying more baggage than a Late Late Show researcher in October. Due to a bafflingly draconian bedtime regime, my siblings and I were never allowed to watch the show as children, which meant going into school on the first Monday in December knowing that everyone else would be bubbling with excitement over toys we’d never heard of and children we didn’t know. And unlike the entire 92 episodes of Starsky & Hutch (oh yes), it was impossible to fake having watched a programme when you literally had no concept of what it was about. (An odd byproduct of never having seen The Late Late Show as a child, incidentally, was that in spite of his voice filling my childhood for two hours every single morning, I had no idea what Gay Byrne looked like until I was an adult. To this day, when I see Uncle Gaybo, my first thought is, ‘imposter’.)

Now, I know that The Toy Show presided over by Gay was a much more modest event than the current bells, whistles and tinsel version, but still, it was unquestionably an event. And growing up in Ireland missing out on this national water cooler moment (even if water coolers had yet to arrive in thirsty Ireland) really did feel like we weren’t quite as Irish as our friends. And so, stricken by a crisis in national identity, I fled the country in my twenties. (Oh, all right, there were other, more pressing reasons as well.)

By the time I came home and The Late Late Toy Show rolled around, I had three children under the age of five. Surely, if anyone was going to wring every drop of enchantment and excitement out of The Toy Show, it was now me. And so we pressed the ‘record’ button, pinged the microwave popcorn and settled down for what I’d promised the children would be an Irish treat like no other. And… and…

Let’s just say that the Earth didn’t move. The children were too young to be engaged by anything beyond the first segment, with the toys for teenies, and by the time I’d dispatched them all to bed, I was too exhausted to appreciate what books ten-yearolds were reading. Not for the last time, I remember pouring a glass of wine and thinking, ‘this will be as good as seeing Grease for the first time five years after everyone else.’ And then promptly nodding off in front of the television.

They got older. We tried harder. But no matter how much I tried to convince myself that this was a significant event in Irish life, I couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that it was just an overly long demonstration of toys my children couldn’t touch by children they didn’t know, interspersed with performances from precocious children who made mine feel inadequate, cheered on by overheated adults with red faces and terrible jumpers, all keen to go home with as many B&B nights and hampers as is humanly possible.

It’s not you, Late Late Toy Show. It’s me. After all, more than 1.5 million viewers and almost 100,000 ticket applications can’t be wrong.

THE eight most watched television programmes in Ireland this century are all Late Late Toy Shows. And I have many friends, some parents of adult children and others who never had children at all, who will sit down on Friday and gorge on the visual treats on offer. As it happens, I will be in Dingle, at Other Voices with my own adult son. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind missing The Toy Show?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. ‘Nah. I always thought it was a bit boring.’

Maybe it’s in our DNA. Maybe the testing kit that I’ve requested for Christmas will reveal that it is me, not Gay Byrne, who is the imposter. But if the fault is in our stars, then I’d still rather be looking at the ones in Kerry’s Dark Sky Reserve this Friday night than trying to muster enthusiasm for a small stranger messing with a robot. And I’m kind of sorry that I never got it. But honestly, I’m not sorry that at least now, I don’t have to try any more.