Ryan Tubridy recounts saving baby ‘hurtling’ down broken shopping centre escalator

"This all happened in slow motion."

Ryan Tubridy has recounted saving a baby who was speeding down a broken escalator in a shopping centre. The Late Late Show presenter said that he was doing a spot of shopping when he noticed a mother, a buggy, and a child at the top of a flat unmoving escalator. Tubridy said that the mother was holding the buggy by a strap when the strap snapped and sent the child "hurtling" down the escalator. The child was eating a cinnamon swirl at the time. "This all happened in slow motion," he said on his RTÉ Radio One show. "Child happy, mother hassled, box under the arm, holding the buggy, but there was a strap she was holding the buggy by. "Then, split second, the strap snapped open. The buggy was released, I look up and all I see hurtling down the escalator is runaway baby with cinnamon swirl snapped in half." Tubridy said that he sprang to action to stop the buggy from going further than the end of the escalator. The child was seemingly "oblivious" to what was happening. "I did look over my shoulder and if no one had been there, the baby would have been in a bit of pain, there would have been a bruise, a burst lip, something," he said. "So it just happened that it worked out in the end. The mother had done nothing wrong, it was just something faulty with the strap holding onto the pram. "It just was one of those things and thankfully everything was okay." Thankfully, indeed. Tubridy returns to The Late Late Show this Friday to mark the beginning of the programme's new season. He will be joined by Love Island stars Greg O'Shea, Maura Higgins, and Amber Gill, as well as Aisling Bea and Sinead O'Connor.