There really should be a law against it

Nov 21 2007 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

THERE has never been anyone more in their element than my friend Jenni in a joke shop. A greedy child in the pick ’n’ mix aisle or a magpie in a diamond store look positively woeful in comparison.

Faced with hundreds of fancy dress items, she wavered between a 17th- century pirate and a 21st- century flasher, complete with 38DD fake breasts and a sparkly tiara.

“You do realise we’re only going to be wearing these for half an hour before we have to put our normal clothes back on to go out in,” I reminded her, terrified by the image of Jen trying to get into a Stockholm nightclub, cutlass and dirty brown mac in hand.

In the end, we went for a European Union theme to the short party in our hotel room in Sweden, where we were spending the weekend to celebrate a mutual friend’s 30th birthday.

Unable to be dissuaded from head-to-toe costume, Jenni went for pink tiger-print flares and a hippy wig that she hoped would make her resemble Abba.

Meanwhile, armed with enough different types of head gear to kit out an entire gift shop of traditional dolls, I had latched on to a black beret and a pair of 2ft-long plaits that you hook over your ears.

Getting ready in the hotel room last weekend, we looked a right motley crew – Jen as Chav Barbie and the others as a combination of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Switzerland, Scotland, Ireland and Sweden.

Only I, as France, looked relatively presentable, and I feel I can say that as a statement of fact, rather than of boastfulness, because I have never had much luck with fancy dress costumes in the past.

There was the Halloween it rained and my pumpkin costume dissolved. Then there was the New Year’s Eve as a student when a schoolfriend waited until I had slicked all my hair back with half a pot of gel and applied a thick coating of gold facepaint before announcing she didn’t want to dress as an alien after all.

There I was, a human Blue Peter reject, and she looked like she’d just stepped out off the catwalk. Mind you, she did pull a bloke in a dress.

I once went to a movie-themed party as Daphne, from Scooby Doo, and everyone thought I was supposed to be Jonathan Ross’s wife, Jane Goldman, and I was once told off for not making enough effort at a “football” party, when I went as the pitch and everyone else had splashed out on full kit.

I wasn’t the most ridiculously-dressed guest however, as Jenni, who had dashed around the house looking for things she could pull together as a costume, turned up as “Gerard Hula Hula Skirt” complete with a garland of fake flowers and a home-made Houiller mask.

Fortunately, though, neither of us have ever gone along as a Chelsea Pensioner, which is just as well because it is a criminal offence to impersonate one.

Whether a confused fancy-dresser has ever appeared in court accused of this misdemeanour, I do not know. I doubt they have in recent years because it is one of those laws that dates back so far that most people have forgotten about it.

Then occasionally someone is caught getting a fish drunk in Oklahoma or carrying bees in his hat in Kansas, and a piece of thought-to-be defunct legal statute is dusted off and spouted once again.

Not that you could imagine anyone performing a citizen’s arrest on someone eating a mince pie on Christmas Day (banned by Oliver Cromwell) or citing, as a defence to murder, the law that allows you to kill a Scotsman within the walls of York if he is carrying a bow and arrow.

Perhaps if I look hard enough there will be a mandate dating from the 17th century that prevents 29-year-old women from wearing flasher macs, because I’m not convinced Jenni has given up on that idea altogether . . .

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk