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HE HAS RED hair, rosy cheeks and lives in a box. If you were a kid of the 80s then you’ll recognise this description straight away.
Bosco, the much loved puppet, entertained Irish children for much of the late 70s and 80s, with repeats of the show shown on RTÉ up until 1998.
‘Hello boys and girls.’ This iconic catchphrase opened the show, which was jam-packed with favourites like the Magic Door, Faherty the Dog, the McSpuds and Freddy Fox.
So what is Bosco up to these days? Well, he’s still in the entertainment business, spreading joy to a new generation of children.
Paula Lambert, the puppeteer behind Bosco, who has continued on with Bosco in theatres up and down the country, said that Bosco continues to be loved by children today.
Bosco’s appeal
“Children just love the Bosco. He still appeals to kids today,” she said. “Of course, there is nostalgia there too, as Mammies and Daddies bring their kids to the show.”
Lambert said that she is protective of the Bosco character. “He is what he is. He is a very loyal character, which is why he hasn’t changed much in all the years.”
Born in Donnybrook in Dublin 4 in 1978, and with no definitive answer as to whether Bosco is a boy or a girl, Bosco has filmed 386 programmes for RTÉ.
In the run up to Christmas, Bosco is getting involved in a new project and is throwing his weight behind something very important to him, the LauraLynn Children’s Hospice.
Once again Bosco is leading the recycling call for LauraLynn, with WEEE Ireland, and asking the public to collect their waste batteries for recycling as a part of the annual campaign to contribute to LauraLynn, Ireland’s Children’s Hospice.
LauraLynn
In 2012/2013, the public recycled 25 million batteries, raising €90,ooo for the charity, and it is hoped that the 2014/2015 campaign will be even more successful.
Lambert said:
LauraLynn is an amazing place, but they get no money, so Bosco is trying to help raise awareness of the great work they do.In a perfect world we wouldn’t have to do this, but they are only amazing. Bosco really wants to get the word out that this is a beautiful place, not a scary place for children.Bosco loves going there and making the children smile. It really is a special place.
The money raised will go towards the LauraLynn at Home programme, which is currently being trialled in Dublin North-East and Dublin Mid-Leinster with a view to being rolled out nationwide next year. It provides hands-on care in the home, provided by a team of dedicated LauraLynn nurses and health care assistants, giving families respite.
Lambert said Bosco wants everyone to know about the good work LauraLynn does and this year, they want to beat the €90,000 mark, said Lambert.
With the Late Late Toy Show on this Friday, we had to ask if Bosco would be making an appearance? Unfortunately not, said Lambert, who added that last year was actually the first time Bosco appeared on the Toy Show in over 30 years. He will be watching though, she said.
To help this years battery recycling campaign you can simply recycle your waste batteries anywhere that you see the blue WEEE Ireland battery box. You will find them in local shops, businesses and schools across the country. All retailers that sell batteries are obliged to take them back for free so there is no excuse to not make your ‘donation’ this year and help LauraLynn.
To find out more about LauraLynn please visit lauralynn.ie
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Global? Start at home first.
This government needs to do more to support the largest employer in Ireland, SME’s.
Great country if you are Google etc. God help anyone looking to run their own business tho!
Large players like Google actually distort the market here, welcome as they are.
You have mid level managers thinking 80k is their right, not something that is unheard of in most of Europe. Rent and property prices in Dublin driven crazy by high paying multi-nationals which destroy the competitiveness of the country.
Most of our exports come from 40 US owned companies, over 85% in fact. What a position to place oneself in.
Multi-nationals are lovely to have but they are in terms of economic sustainability and jobs they are a distant second in importance to SME’s.
Double edged sword,
Seanie, multinationals were our one saving grace when the sh!t hit the fan in 2007 so I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss their importance. They also create service industries around them which are equally just as important. And if as you say they represent 85% of our experts what do you propose replaces that? It’s not like we have a tonne of natural resources to tap into.
It is the sheer volume of the Pharma industry that distorts the exports.
We live in hope that America will not need someday to refocus tax at home in a recession or jobs at home for political reasons. What a gamble.
Our trade balance is a complete mirage due to Multi-nationals.
Focusing in on SME’s is much more important than Multinationals, they provide most of this countries jobs and spending.
We’ll never reduce unemployment just using multi-nationals, we’ll never have a sustainable tax base or economy by over relying on them.
There are a lot of sme’s that can be brought up to being large players.
Companies like Kerry Group, Glanbia CRH etc are leading global players in their fields, they are some of our multi-nationals, investing large sums all over globe.
Rental increases have nothing to do with google. It’s to do with the lack of housing supply due to a collapsed construction industry based on FF policy.
Don’t forget the planners J. They are still insisting developers build apartments in the middle of no where despite the obvious demand for 3 and 4 bed houses. I’m amazed this isn’t getting more media attention.
Govt too busy bending over for foreign multinationals and rolling out the red carpet for snakes like Donald Trump to help Irish SMEs. I see they’ve brought in an extra USC level now for self employed people. Shows you where their priorities lie.
Self employed earning over 100k. Hardening throttling enterprise is it?
A self employed person has more right to 100k than a high level manager in someone else’s business.
I haven’t much problem with the higher charge at that level but it is very wrong that it is just targeting the self employed. It should be across the board.
The higher tax rate for the self employed who are on reasonable wages shows that the self employed are actively targeted for bleeding.
C’mere to me, where do I get a job that pays €29 per hour??
Primary teacher!
Be a crappie hooker……
When is the next protest against water charges in Dublin?
NEXT Water charge protest: [NOVEMBER, 1st. DUBLIN]
Would like to see the relationship between average gross pay and net pay between Ireland and rest of EU. We have high gross salaries but I imagine they are so high to make up for all the tax and deductions. Talking Private sector here. Public Sector is another animal completely.
In most of Western Europe the tax take is much higher on average, never mind that property tax and water rates are also higher.
The tax wedge is much higher across Western Europe people, ye might not like that fact but that is still a fact.
That’s simply not true Seanie.
A useful graph to include would be each countries % spend of GDP. Most of the EE states with low cost of labour have less than 40% of GDP spent by governments. This with higher % spend have higher hourly rates. Relationship is striking
To take on them we will have to kick every high productivity business out of Ireland.
That is the key difference, most of them do not have any, at any level.
How is competing with high unemployment, low value businesses with poor national infrastructures a good idea.
Luddite.
That’s not my point at all. But I won’t waste my time or yours educating you
Why are labor costs in Ireland always so distorted?
Fact is the Irish worker has 20 days paid holidays in a year.
In Germany the Worker has 30 days paid annual leave ?
First three days of sick leave is at the employees expense.
In Germany sick pay is covered 100% from day (for a limited period of time)
The books are being seriously cooked here it is a complete lie that the Irish worker is so expensive.
However compare the wages of Lawyers,doctors and the public service teachers and politicians.
Our s are some of the worlds most expensive. The Wage issue is pure profiteer propaganda.
So what if we are still above the EU average, we are cheaper on that scale than most of our competitors. We’ll never beat countries like Spain or Portugal or Cyprus on wages, unless we consider cutting wages by 50% and kicking out the high wage multi-nationals.
We pay professional people, senior managers, doctors etc way too much, in many cases double even what wealthy European countries pay.
Legal fees here are outrageous and it is very wrong and selfish that no Govt. have tackled the Law Society here and its closed shop. It is an extortion on Irish society and deeply damaging to business here.
Do you ever take a break from commenting on here. Find yourself a hobby well ye
Ah yes, it’d be great if we could just not pay all the people that do all the work and watch the money roll in. A capitalists wet dream.
Welcome to Jobridge Ireland…
Yeah great place u can pay your employees as little as possible. Zero hour contracts jobbridge.fcukn assault on the working class
“Is Ireland really ‘the best small country in the world to do business in’?”
Not with that preposition dangling on the end of its sentence it’s not!
I guess I’m just going to have to pay a few per cent extra tax to set up my soon-to-be-highly-lucrative grammar auditing consultancy in a country with some syntactic credibility. Well done Ireland – that’s one more highly skilled job you’ve allowed to slip through your bungling fingers!!!
Only prescriptive grammarians would present such a narrow, limited and mostly historical interpretation of syntax; it belongs back in the 18th century along with Bishop Lowth. Most modern grammarians accept the proposition that language is better analysed in terms of a lexical approach.
Q. Is Ireland…blah blah blah?
A. No
Enda says it is
No
Support Small businesses
Great country if your name is O’Brien
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