RTE spent €330,000 on make-up over the past year and a half, the Herald can reveal.

The national broadcaster forked out €230,000 for slap last year alone, and had already spent more than €100,800 to the end of August.

The figures released through the Freedom of Information Act reveal just how much it costs to make up Grainne, Miriam and Blathnaid, among others.

Added to the bill for clothes, the total bill comes to nearly €800,000. RTE has some explaining to do, after an analysis of the figures shows a huge and unexplained variance between programmes and their bills.

Tubridy Tonight got away with a tiny bill of just €100.

The overall sums includes "hairdressing services, hairdressing and make-up products and other make-up tools and consumables for all programmes including news and current affairs, weather, entertainment, sport, lifestyles, young people's and other programmes".

STREAK

The details obtained by the Herald show that the largest bill went to the RTE newsroom.

This is accounted for by the large number of staff, including presenters and reporters. In many cases reporters are issued with their mobile make-up kits to ensure they look their best while out on jobs. They consumed €52,192 worth of cosmetics and hairdressing services.

And while the ever-popular Winning Streak got a major Las Vegas-style makeover last year, it seems its novice hosts Kathryn Thomas and Aidan Power did, too.

The make-up bill for the lottery game's hosts and guests reached almost €4,000 for the full year.

The Late Late Show might have processed a lot more guests but most must have come self-prepared because its bill came in at under €1,000. In fact, beauty services for Miriam O'Callaghan's six-episode summer series cost €71 more than its more illustrious flagship show. Ryan seems to have spotted some bargain price rouge because Tubridy Tonight had a make-up bill of just €100. Michael Lyster, Pat Spillane and The Sunday Game team kept it real with expenditure of just €20.

plucked

Their more upmarket colleagues on Prime Time were glammed up at a cost of €296, while the cast of Fair City were plucked and pruned for €5,286. Kids TV presenters were also into their style, with Ice costing €1,094 in cosmetics for its three presenters. TTV host Liam McCormack and his guests accumulated invoices for €400, while the The Den make-up charges were €1,154.