Jolly jovial joyful jumpers

The most famous Christmas jumper of them all?

Stacey Gallagher from the Costume Department in RTÉ tells Irish Country Living about the search for the Late Late Toy Show Christmas Jumper.

The RTÉ costume department starts the search for Ryan’s jumper about six weeks before the Toy Show airs.

“Ryan changed jumpers at every break this year” explains Stacey. “They were all interactive jumpers – with a slot that displayed the screen of an iPhone, and there were moving pictures on the screen.

“It’s something you want to impress with. The jumper we pick has to be more than what you would buy down the road, and we usually want to do better than the year before. Ryan is not fussy, but he knows exactly what he wants out of a costume or a jumper.”

Stacey says they do get some jumpers sent in from companies looking for publicity.

Some years they use them and some years they don’t, but last year they actually held an open competition for companies and people to send in jumpers. This year the jumper was found online, from a company called Digital Dudz, a UK-based company.

However, the Christmas jumper is just one part of the RTÉ wardrobe’s role in the beast that is the Toy Show.

“There’s so much more involved than just the jumper; it’s part of a whole process,” says Stacey.

“It’s manic for the weeks running up to it. We’re in preparation for six weeks. This year there were over 130 costumes made from scratch.”

A jumper’s tale

Irish Country Living’s very own Ciara Leahy has a Christmas jumper tale to tell: “I got my dad a Christmas jumper last year and it had a picture with Mary and Joseph on top of the donkey on it, with the inscription, “Are we there yet?” He laughed when I gave it to him and said “I’m going to wear it today.” Off we went to 12 o’clock mass in Ballincollig, but there were no seats left, so my dad had to stand beside the radiator. Halfway through mass, I looked over and he was red in the face, pulling at his collar and fanning himself – but he still had his big winter jacket on him, all buttoned up. After mass, he told me he’d nearly passed out because he couldn’t take off his jacket due to the joking nature of the jumper!”WELL YOU MAY TWINKLE! This jumper could almost be described as stylish – it has a ski-lodge-in-the-Alps type of vibe, but its best feature is the row of lights running above the Christmas trees across the chest – these are actually real, dancing lights! From Next, €44.