Ok, here’s the pitch – take a slightly zany Irish comedian and shove him into a classroom full of school kids aged from six to 12 years old, point a camera at them and watch the chats and the giggles flow.

What could possibly go wrong?

That’s the simple concept behind First Class Takes, a new digital-first show from RTÉ Kids that reboots, nay, turbocharges much-loved RTÉ series School Around the Corner and plonks it firmly in our modern world of perma-scrolling and online clip culture.

Airing on the RTÉ Kids YouTube channel along with clips on Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, the seven-minute long show debuts on Friday and will see children talk candidly and often hilariously about anything and everything – from school, to family, and from friendships to everyday life.

Our host is Tony Cantwell, the Dublin comedian and podcaster who has previously appeared in shows such as The Fear, Good Boy, and Netflix’s Apocalypse Clown.

And as a father of a six-year-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old, this one-time class clown is a big kid himself. The perfect man for the job so.

“I loved it! The kids were great. It wasn’t even a presenting gig; it was just me chatting to kids,” he says. “I find myself a family events a lot of the time and I am consciously sitting at the kids table.

“My bother in law would be like ‘ah thanks very much for entertaining the kids’ but I actually love it. they never ask me anything about my life, what I’m doing, if I have plans for the weekend . . . “

The series was shot by comedy director Ger Walsh across a diverse mix of urban and rural primary schools: St. Nicholas’ Primary School, Longwood, Co. Meath, St. Ultan’s Primary School, Cherry Orchard, Dublin, St. Patrick’s National School, Curtlestown, Co. Wicklow, and the After Schools Education & Support Programme, Sheriff Street, Dublin

Tony knows the secret of chatting to kids – talk to them like adults and you’ll get the best out of them. “100%,” he says. “The more you chat to kids, the more you realise that they are the exact same but they just know less things, they have a shallower reference pool.

“I love how brutally honest they are. They are probably thinking the same thing you are but you just don’t say it. They have similar dreams and aspirations and their own view of themselves. That all gets tampered down by life and comparisons with others. Kids are the truest and most authentic version of humanity.”

Tony, who is from Marino in Dublin, also hosts the podcasts Tony Cantwell’s Hit Show and Young Hot Guys, alongside Shane Daniel Byrne and Killian Sundermann.

In 2024, he appeared in Amazon Prime’s LOL: Last One Laughing, while his screen credits include Amy Huberman’s comedy series Finding Joy.

He is also recording another RTÉ TV show at the moment. He’s fairly tight-lipped about it but does say, “It has an absolutely incredibly explosive premise and it also involves kids of an older age.”

Tony says he learnt a lot about what makes modern Irish children tick from making First Class Takes. “I’ve seen it with the nieces and nephews and my own kids but I came away from this show and I couldn’t believe how conscious of others the kids actually are,” he says.

“We did an episode on money and wealth and you’d assume the kids would be like, ‘I want this and this and this and I want a house and I want this toy . . . ‘ but these kids said, ‘I’d give money to people who don’t have any money’.

“Their number one priority was making the world a better place. A lot of it comes down to the schools instilling incredible positive and hopeful message to these kids.”

And of course they are completely relaxed in front of the camera. “We are all led to believe that kids these days aspire to be YouTubers and influencers but that was not an aspiration I saw with these kids. I did notice that the kids who had more access to tech had fewer hobbies and interests. The kids who had free, unlimited access to tech, seemed more interested in online stuff.”

Was any of it unusable? “Well, kids these days play a lot of video games and maybe get ideas that would be inappropriate. I do not judge them and I don’t think any of them had any malicious intentions.

“There were also some rude words that some of the kids had. There were no brats but when they get together, they kill you! Even the wallflowers were brats when they got together. They’d steal my hat and the glasses off my face but they were good kids.”

It seems the school around the corner is definitely not the same.