8 things you need to know about tonight's Late Late Toy Show

It's only a matter of hours now until Ryan Tubridy dons that Christmas jumper of his and welcomes the nation to 2015's installment of The Late Late Toy Show. The excitement levels are undoubtedly sky high in households across the country, whether there are kids in them or not. So make sure you have the feet up early, the fire on and all the tea and biccies on hand you might need, as there is a hell of a show in store.

Here's just some of what you can expect from tonight's show...

1.The Theme

The past few years The Toy Show has had a theme of some sort with the studio decorated accordingly and a whopper of an opening number. This year the theme is Beauty and the Beast with Ryan and a cast of more than 80 young performers hoping to dazzle with an opening number based on the much-loved Disney musical. If it's even half as good as that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang opening last year we are in for a treat.

2. The kids

This year's show is the biggest yet with more than 285 kids joining Ryan for the night, with the youngest aged just four-years-old. Yep, TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FIVE. We can only imagine what backstage will look like.

3. The Christmas jumper

As has become tradition in recent years, Ryan Tubridy will be sporting a Christmas jumper. It's top secret stuff as to what type of one exactly he will wear, with Boyle's Sports even setting up betting on it. However, it seems the information may have leaked with Boyle's closing off the betting at 12pm today. Apparently it's hotly tipped the colour will be green and Santa will be the symbol on Ryan's jumper.

4. Someone is going to make us cry

You will definitely need the tissues at some point tonight as Ryan has said there is one act that moved him to tears in rehearsals and 'will really stop you on your tracks'.

5. Toys

There will be over 200 toys featured in tonight's show, most of which are returning with their trustee toy testers, while there are over 300 toys in the actual set. Also, all the toys featured on the show will be donated to charity following the broadcast.

6. The set

As we said there are 300 toys on the set, but as well as that, it took up to 30 people seven weeks to design and construct the set, as well as it taking 15 people four days to install it. It was co-designed by award-winning RTÉ production designers Marcella Power and Catherine Sorg and takes its inspiration not only from Beauty and the Beast but thanks to Catherine’s French heritage, the 1946 Jean Cocteau film La Belle et la Bête as well.

Also there have apparently been literally hundreds of roses handmade by the set designers. Pretttttyy.

7. Viewers

The Toy Show has consistently been the most watched TV show of the entire year in the ratings, in fact, the six most watched shows on Irish television since the turn of the millennium have been the last six Toy Shows

1.357 million tuned in for the show last year, while the reach was 2.065 million (the number of people who tuned in for at least a minute of the show). And eh, what were the rest of you doing??

8. You can watch it anywhere in the world

For those of you abroad feeling homesick, never fear, you can watch the Toy Show live on the RTE Player tonight. We may not all have hoverboards but it is pretty cool that we can do that in 2015.