Superstar singer Jazzy said “It’s a dream come true” to be on the Late Late Toy Show as she surprised her biggest fan tonight.
Little Dory Hudson, eight, was speechless when she got to meet her favourite musician on the biggest night for Irish television. The Dublin singer, 28, was catapulted into superstardom this year and was the most-streamed Irish female artist in 2024.
She told host Patrick Kielty: “It has been an amazing year and a dream come true to come to be on the Toy Show”.Dory, who said she was named after the fish in Finding Nemo, got the first laughs of the night as Kielty said she could be the one presenting the show.
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From Tallaght, Dublin, the young girl showed off her toy pet shop, as she dreams of being a vet when she’s older. While testing a fur-real duck teddy that had loads of tiny duck children, she said: “She has loads of children, how does she manage! Look at all the ducks, she is going to get her bits and bobs in the shops!”
Two young space fans, Zara from Tyrone and Killian from Mayo, also got the shock of their lives. They were surprised by the first Irish person due to go into space - NASA astronaut Norah Patten.
Producers were very creative with her entrance. The two kids believed they were launching a toy rocket into space when Norah jumped out of a life size rocket.
It’s Kielty’s second year at the helm of one of the most-watched shows in Ireland, with 1.5m people tuning in on RTÉ One alone last year. The theme of Friday night’s programme was the much-loved successful Christmas film franchise Home Alone.
If viewers didn’t know what the theme was before tuning in, it wouldn’t have taken them long to guess. The elaborate opening scene of the Toy Show showed almost a dozen children running through a Christmas-decorated Dublin Airport.
They catch their flight at the very last second but while sitting in business class, a young boy and girl depicting the McAllister parents worry they have forgotten something. After they go through a list of what they could’ve forgotten - Barry’s Tea, leaving the immersion on, they realise they have left something very important behind- Patrick Kielty!
The main man of the night then bounced onto our small screens in RTÉ’s television studio. While his entrance wasn’t quite as exciting as Gay Byrne riding into the studio on an elephant on the 2002 show, it was very fitting.
The presenter rushed down a grand staircase akin to the one in Home Alone in a red sleigh, as he pulled the well-known “Where’s Kevin?” face. Kevin, played by charismatic six-year-old Louis Hanna, then took centre stage in the studio in the opening musical number.
Children from the Spotlight Stage School lit up the set, which depicted McAllister's cosy winter wonderland home. They performed the iconic song from the movie, Chuck Berry’s Run Rudolph Run as Kevin was chased by burglars The Wet Bandits.
Choreographers of the performance got very creative to make sure every child had a part, as the pizza delivery man and a bin even featured on the show. It wasn’t just the children that dressed up last night. Gone are the days of Gay Byrne and Pat Kenny wearing as many Christmas jumpers as possible throughout the night.
Kielty has decided to step it up a notch - and wear as many crazy costumes as possible. After sliding down the staircase, he showed off a strange-looking Christmas tree costume- complete with tacky gold tinsel and red bows.
He then stormed the stage as a gorilla, a WWE fighter and a gorilla. The Late Late Toy Show is the one night of the year when children are allowed to stay up late, eat sweets, and cosy up on the couch.
However, kids across the country may have been left disappointed last night as thousands of houses were left without power due to Storm Darragh. A status red wind warning was in place for six counties, while the majority of the country was under an orange warning.
Kielty mentioned the storm at the beginning of the show, saying: “We hope you have your hatches battened and you are staying safe. It’s all about the magic of Christmas with some brilliant kids, some special guests, and to raise big money for the Toy Show appeal.”
In 2020, the programme started the appeal for the first time, inspired by the late Saoirse Ruane. The young girl was seven years old when she took part in the Toy Show, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when she spoke about her cancer journey.
In the past four years, over €20m has been raised in the appeal. Sadly, little Saoirse died earlier this year, and last night’s programme was the first without her.
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