"Having two young kids, and knowing what 6-7 means, is a big bonus when you're doing something like the Toy Show," says its host, Patrick Kielty. Donal O’Donoghue gets the low-down from the ringmaster on the greatest show on TV.
"It’s both a blessing and a curse," says Patrick Kielty of the joys of having two boys of Toy Show age. Yes, it’s true that Milo (9) and James (7) are invaluable sounding boards when you’re about to host the most wonderful – and indefinable – TV show on the planet, but then there’s also the relentless grilling and emotional blackmail.
"The interrogation I get about the theme of the show every year is fierce," says Kielty, "and it goes something like this: 'So, what is the Toy Show theme dad?’
‘Listen, lads, ye will just have to wait for the official announcement.’
‘Ah, but Dad, c’mon! I know you tell other people that, but this is us. You’ve just got to tell us.’
"But I can’t tell, and I don’t, and that prompts a guessing game in our house as to what it might be. Our seven-year-old is especially relentless. You think you’ve fobbed him off and then, a few weeks later, during the school run, he pipes up again. And I’m back in that ding-dong questioning."
In its long and colourful history, Paddy Kielty (aged 54¾) is probably the Toy Show’s most at ease host: quick on his feet, endlessly curious, game for anything. That’s partly to do with being the father of two young boys, but also his innate sense of mischief allied to a comic timing honed in a lengthy career in stand-up and light-entertainment TV.
"The big bonus of having a seven and nine-year-old is that they will constantly call you out, asking questions like: ‘Why can’t I do that?’ When I was growing up, the answer to that one was usually: ‘because I said so!’ But that won’t cut it these days. So, I have a good training camp for the Toy Show. With most interviews on the Late Late, you have your questions, the guests have theirs, and occasionally it might go in another direction. With the kids, you’re guaranteed that it will."
Kielty is just back from the school run when he talks to me via Zoom from his north London home. As ever, he is chatty and charismatic, but there are times when you feel like Milo or James, asking questions that are often sidestepped.
For this interview, the PR handler said the Late Late host would not talk about the break-up of his marriage to Cat Deely, which was formally announced in July, or the death of his mother, Mary, last March. The former was addressed at the time with the couple issuing a joint statement, stating that they "would continue to be united as loving parents to our children" and adding that there would be no further comment.
The latter is still too raw for Patrick to talk about, but the Friday after his mother’s passing, he dedicated the Late Late Show to her, saying: "In over 50 years, Mary never missed a Late Late Show, and there’s no way she’d want me to miss this one for her tonight."
I last met Kielty on the eve of his Late Late Show debut in September 2023. ‘You’re an old hand at it now Paddy!’ I say. He laughs. "Hosting the Late Late is still very strange for me," he says. "Two or three seconds before I walk out, just as those drums start up the theme music, I still think that Gay Byrne is about to go out to host the show. And in the next moment, it’s that thing of ‘I’m doing this!’.
"I’ve learned that anything can happen on the Late Late and it’s best to go with the flow. Those elements are ramped up for the Toy Show. So many people in RTÉ asked me that first year ‘How are you feeling about the Toy Show?’ and I was like, ‘I feel OK. How do you feel?’ There’s so much stuff wrapped up in hosting the Toy Show, so much white noise that you just must tune out of, otherwise you couldn’t get the job done."
Kielty’s Late Late Show debut coincided with the release of the film Ballywalter. In that quiet drama, he played Shane, an aspiring stand-up with a troubled past who bonds with a taxi driver (Seána Kerslake). It was a nuanced performance that suggested that Kielty had another string to his bow.
"That film was released on a Friday night in 2023, but then something else came along and took over my life," he says. "So, while a few acting proposals have come my way since, I have not been able to make them work."
Yet he has done a few things, including a significant cameo in Lisa (Derry Girls) McGee’s Netflix drama, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (due February 2026). "I end up crossing paths with the three main girls for one night," he says, carefully choosing his words. "It’s a weird thing."
Patrick Kielty cut his showbiz teeth as a stand-up comic. It was his thing from the beginning and flourished during his time at Queen’s University, Belfast. In 1992, he hosted Northern Ireland’s first comedy club, The Empire Laughs Back, at a time when the Troubles still cast a long, deadly shadow (his father, Jack, a businessman, was murdered by Loyalist paramilitaries in 1988). He went on to a career in TV with Last Chance Lottery (Channel 4) and Patrick Kielty Almost Live (BBC).
His documentary, My Dad, The Peace Deal and Me (2018), was nominated for a BAFTA, while Patrick Kielty: 100 Years of Union (2021), in which he interrogated the likelihood of a united Ireland, won a Royal Television Society award for Best Presenter. He brings all this lived experience and professional savvy to hosting the Late Late, nimbly walking that tightrope between the light and the dark and well able for any pesky kids who might sneak up on him with a water pistol.
And he wants more. Acting is high on the wish-list. "Before Ballywalter, I’d be terrified by that idea," he says. "I remember walking onto that set for the first time and dry retching."
But stand-up comedy is in his blood, and earlier this year he returned to the circuit with a revival of his show, Borderline ("an ode to peace, borders and identity in a world turned upside down"). "There were a few years where I didn’t do stand-up, and I later realised that wasn’t doing me any good," he says.
"When you’re tuned into stand-up and working out what’s funny, questioning stuff and writing comedy, it keeps you functioning in a certain way that I enjoy. Because the LLS means so much to me, I didn’t want to be biting off more than I can chew and not giving it the attention it deserved. But stand-up is a big part of the future."
Kielty made an emotional return to the Late Late in September, thanking all those people who had reached out to him in the tough months following the death of his mother and his separation from Cat Deely. "I felt that goodwill coming my way from the very first night back on the show," he says.
"It’s more than a show to me, and that’s why I took the job in the first place. I feel like the lighthouse keeper. The show was there before me, and it will be there after me. But I love the community, the people who stop me to tell me about the show, the people who sent me good wishes."
Does he still get badgered about being from the other side of the island? He shakes his head. "The idea that you’re from a different county is something that you don’t hear any more," he says. "It’s like the All-Ireland being called the All-Ireland: it’s a show for all of the island."
At the beginning of this season, Kielty opened with the line that he will never tire of saying: ‘Welcome to the Late Late Show." It was ever his dream job (there’s an archive clip of Kielty briefly hijacking the show in 1996 and impersonating the host, Gay Byrne): it’s a show that is part of his DNA, freighted with personal resonance, especially at this time of year.
"My first memory of the Toy Show was Gay with an electric car and me genuinely thinking that there would be a chance that car would turn up in Dundrum, County Down," he says.
"This was the late 1970s, and the idea of an electric car was almost beyond what I could imagine. ‘Mum, it’s an electric car!’ That year, a pedal tractor did turn up under the tree, but then the Toy Show is the Fantasy Football of Toys. It’s not reality, and that’s also important to remember."
