Lorraine Courtney: The ‘Late Late Toy Show’ is not for kids – it’s for anxious, mortgage-paying millennials

Stressed adults get to relive their youth and try to recapture the sentiment of Christmas through the much-mythologised show

Patrick Kielty during the opening of last year’s ‘Late Late Toy Show’. Photo: Andres Poveda

The Late Late Toy Show is no longer a children’s programme. It has become a group therapy session for us: deeply anxious, mortgage-paying millennials, where we sit under weighted blankets for an evening of escapism.

My children won’t watch it. I can put on a saucepan of popcorn, make mugs of cocoa and declare quality family viewing, but my three small units of chaos – the seven, four, and three-year-old – will not be persuaded.