Review: Kielty is everyone's Buddy on Toy Show debut

Can Patrick Kielty fill those recently vacated, pointed, curly winklepickers? Yes, he can.

Didn’t he do well? The big question looming over Patrick Kielty’s debut turn as the host of the Christmas TV event of the year was: would he be able to equal or even top the performance of Ryan Tubridy, a self-confessed big kid with no less than 14 Toy Shows under his belt?

This is a show with countless moving parts, costume changes and a blur of quickfire items about the hottest Christmas goodies. Oh, and 170 singing, playacting, dancing, Yeats-reciting, dinosaur-loving and rapping kids taking over Studio 4 in RTÉ.

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The other big question was: how long was Kielty going to last in those Elf the movie mustard yellow tights? Now that the magic dust has cleared for another year, we can safely say he pulled a bit of a Christmas cracker on Friday night.

If Gay Byrne was like an indulgent uncle, Pat Kenny only really excited by the tech stuff and Ryan more excited than the actual kids, the new PK was very much his own man with his studio full of toy testers and an audience who looked like the front window of a North Pole haberdashery. This was a more chilled-out Toy Show. Kielty must have a volume control on his Christmas jumper.

The Toy Show must always go on, but it would have been remiss not to mention the horrific events in Dublin of the day before, and Kielty handled a very solemn moment with the kind of sincerity and sensitivity he has shown over the last few months on the Late Late.

"Given the events of the last 24 hours, it is important to remember what this time of year is all about," he said as the show began. "And that is holding your kids extra tight this Christmas. We’re thinking of every family who needs an extra hug tonight."

Decked out in more velvet than a Haight-Ashbury love-in, a troupe of performers from the Spotlight Stage School Carlow & Navan got the Christmas log rolling on the Elf-themed set and blasted out the opening number of Santa Claus is Coming to Town. The energy levels didn’t let up. Although I did feel for one little girl elf who was hoisted high up into the rafters of Studio 4 and half expected to hear her say, "Mr Kielty, sir, can I come down now?"

As the father of two young lads of five and seven, it all came very naturally to the new host. As did his talent for breaking a lot of the toys. Like Godzilla in Toy Town, he coolly laid waste to a perfectly good toy gymkhana, snapped the door off of a toy oven and managed to casually mangle a weird skipping game. And someone should really tell Patrick that a watched Beast Lab never boils.

But this year’s extravaganza really was a return to the show’s festive USP - a place to show off and pass judgment on the Crimbo goodies on offer. First up were brother and sister Naoise and Oisín from Drogheda, who demonstrated a pizza oven by rustling up a pie featuring lobster, banana, marshmallow and melon but thankfully no pineapple, because as everyone knows that would be just wrong.

And the toys kept coming. This was a Toy Show and Tell and less of the personality-driven programme of what we may now call the Tubs era. Not that the rather epic two-hour-and-forty minutes running time (or was it longer?) wasn’t full of funny, smart and slightly bonkers little people. Kielty had made it clear that this was the kids’ show and so it was.

Take Sheamie. Seven-going-on-57, he rocked up to the big schmoke from Kilfenora and promptly stole the night with his LEGO demo and the coolest mullet west of the Shannon; horse-mad Freya looked like she was going to burst with excitement when she was told that she and her family would get to watch the gee-gees at the Paris Olympics next summer; and Sophie got the thrill of her young life when she was whisked up to RTÉ from a Toy Show viewing party to make a whirlwind appearance on the show with her beloved unicorn, Uni.

Sadly, our new host didn’t reveal his hidden talents as a singer, but we did get to see him dressed as Ken as he helped eight-year-old Kenza from Waterford demonstrate a chorus line of Riverdancing Kens and Barbies.

As for music, we were treated to no less than eight Matildas belting out A Little Bit Naughty from the hit movie adaptation of the Dahl classic, a censored version of Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo and best of all, about 57 young trad and folk heads from Galway’s Lackagh Céilí Band doing a mighty, mighty medley of Caledonia and The Irish Rover.

Merry Christmas mayhem reigned. By the time the first ad break rolled around, I was exhausted just watching it. Kielty blissfully ignored the old showbiz injunction of never working with children or cuddly toys and went with the flow. Actually, he was swept along on a tide of joy after what had been a horrifying few days for Ireland.

As he signed off, the Co Down man said: "Thank you to everyone here tonight who helped a small boy from Dundrum. Thanks to all the kids who created the magic in our studio. Thanks for going easy on me."

He needn’t have worried. Crammed with little characters and the host’s own measured mania, it was just what Santa and Buddy ordered. Extra hugs all round and a high-five for the new Toy Man in town.

Alan Corr @CorrAlan2

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