Fancy dress makes me cringe
Published:
I REALLY hate putting on fancy dress. In fact there is nothing I like less than going to the pub in a costume.
Just the word costume makes me want to vomit. It was why when I asked to do a gig on the 31st October I checked to make sure it wasn’t a Halloween special.
The idea of doing the whimsical nonsense jokes that I do whilst dressed up as a vampire puts my teeth on edge.
I think I can trace my hatred of fancy dress to three separate points in my life:
When I was a child my parents would never really put much effort into my costume.
With my mum being a nurse and my dad being a chef I can remember taking years about to be an ‘evil’ health professional or an ‘evil’ chef.
All this meant was wearing a white shirt, with some ketchup on it and either a stethoscope or one of my dad’s aprons.
Usually with a bit of A4 paper pinned to the shirt saying ‘Evil Chef’. I think if you have to tell people what you’re costume is, you’ve failed straight away.
Then there was a time as a teenager when I covered myself in green paint and went out as the Incredible Hulk. I got lucky in some nightclub with a girl dressed as a Smurf. I think the attraction came from the fact we couldn’t tell what each other really looked like. When we kissed I think I almost killed myself from some sort of toxic poisoning. I had brown lips for the next three days.
But perhaps the real reason I hate dressing up because about six or seven years ago I went to meet a bunch of mates for a Halloween night out. We were meeting up in a bar to watch a football game first. I was dressed up a wizard. One of my friends was dressed up as James Bond, another two respectively as Napoleon Solo and Illya Kurakin from the Man From Uncle and the other one had just finished work. There I was in a pub watching some football with my four friends, all of whom were wearing suits and ties, surrounded by people in football gear or jeans and t-shirts. At some point someone asked me to take my pointy hat off because it was in the way of the big screen.
So when I got the text off my mate Gordon inviting me out to his 27th birthday ‘Rambo Theme’ night out I was a bit hesitant. I don’t really own any clothes which would suit a Rambo theme, and I’m guessing that going as a member of the ruling Burmese Junta wouldn’t be appropriate. So I stuck to my guns and turned up in some jeans, a shirt and a jacket. Really I had no one else blame but myself as I sat round the pub table with 20 people all dressed up in camouflage gear and war paint. The rest of the pub were noticing our table but looking at me.
Really, I just want to fit in.
