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bronwyn

We've tracked down the twin toy testers from the 1988 Toy Show

Meet Carolyn and Bronwyn Boyle.

YESTERDAY THE RTE Archives department put out a call to identify these identical twins, who appeared as toy testers on The Late Late Toy Show in 1988.

rte RTÉ Archives RTÉ Archives

And, it didn’t take long.

They are Cabinteely girls Carolyn and Bronwyn Boyle, who were ten years old when they joined Uncle Gaybo in the festive RTÉ studio.

Their sister George spotted them on DailyEdge.ie and got in touch, while Bronwyn began receiving notifications from friends when they recognised the twins from the picture.

george

Both Bronwyn and Carolyn both now live in the UK and work in London.

Speaking to DailyEdge.ie today Bronwyn said that Gay Byrne was “such a pro”. He had rehearsed some patter with the girls beforehand but still threw them some curveballs to keep the comedy going.

She remembers that he sister Carolyn threw a curveball of her own, controversially changing her mark for the colouring-in rug they’d been given to test from eight-and-a-half to eight-and-a-quarter.

Bronwyn also revealed that it was actually her sister George and the girls’ mother who had done most of the colouring in, after the twins became bored with the toy. George herself told DailyEdge.ie that she was up “most of the night” before the show attempting to finish it.

Bronwyn admitted:

They did such a beautiful job on it. You’d know it wasn’t two ten-year-olds who coloured it in.

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George remembers “vividly” her sisters appearance on the show, although she wasn’t allowed to attend herself. She reckons her parents dropped the girls off and then waited somewhere in the wings to bring them home again, with space in the audience being at a premium.

Bronwyn has already been in touch with RTÉ Archives to confirm that it is she and Carolyn in the picture, saying “hope the kids involved in Friday’s show are having as great a time as we did”.

She told us that friends who didn’t previously know about her Toy Show appearance ask in mock horror:

This is huge! Why don’t you have this in your LinkedIn?

She says she still enjoys the Toy Show to this day, sharing the experience of “every Irish kids favourite Christmas tradition” with her young nieces.

Join us on Friday evening for our annual Toy Show coverage. We’ll be liveblogging to our heart’s content, like the big kids that we are.

Last year’s Toy Show: How THAT video of Domhnall meeting Robbie Keane went global

Robbie, Mary, Bosco and cups…The Late Late Toy Show 2013 as it happened

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