"I think Santa does watch the Toy Show but he watches it on the Player because he's out the door," says Tubridy.

We caught up with the 'Toy Man' yesterday afternoon ahead of tonight's big event. We wanted to find out if our favourite host had ever worked with Santa Clause seeing as they both love toys so much.

Watch the interview above.

"What my understanding is, is that he watches bits of it in clips rather than the whole thing in a row because this is a busy time for him.

"He kind of gets in touch with our elves to say 'we know what you want and you know what I want' so, I think what we do is, we kind of help each other rather than him constantly taking lessons from us.

"He's a very reasonable person, if he wasn't doing what he's doing now he would be Secretary General of the United Nations."

Toy Show
Tonight's Toy Show is inspired by The Little Mermaid

This year's Late Late Toy Show is inspired by The Little Mermaid and has a huge cast of more than 200 talented young performers and twenty-eight toy testers. The children come from all over Ireland with the youngest just four-years-old.

We spoke with two of the performers to find out how they've been getting on so far. Watch our interview with twelve-year-old Neassa and ten-year-old Cathal below.

We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences


"The best part about being on the Toy Show was meeting Ryan Tubridy at our audition in Galway, says Neassa.

"My favourite part so far is all the bits backstage here in RTÉ," said Cathal.

The Late Late Toy Show airs tonight, Friday, December 1st at 9.35pm on RTÉ One, and will be available to watch worldwide for free on RTÉ Player.