When you have your face painted as a Sugar Skull, with an electric blue wig and fairly lights piled on top of your head its always great knowing you stand out. But when you get told 'You look so amazing, the best I've ever seen you ', it's hard to take that as a complement.
Halloween night. A 'gathering' in a decorated house before a Spookatcular party in Islington, North London. It was nice to see 90% of the guests NOT in a Halloween outfit. Unless you think a Smurf is going to go on a midnight killing spree.
But there we were, The Mad Hatter, a nun, Batman and Robin, a Smurf, a wrestler, a pop art painting and what I thought was Kermit the frog. Turns out he was a Ninja Turtle.
And of course, the full works of a zombie, the Saw doll, Freddie Kruger, a possessed dolly, a skeleton and myself the sugar skull.
So after being told how amazing I looked, by the nun may I add, I wasn't too sure how to take it. So I decided to take it for what it was and hope he meant I'd never looked better in the fancy dress world. But gazing at my head in the toilet mirror ten minutes later, I realised I DID look absolutely fabulous! I wanted my face as a sugar skull covered in gems and my head lit up with fairy lights forever! Any wrinkle, or pore or scar was completely eliminated! Not to mention my wig had no split ends! I felt 10 years younger! Dam it, if I only I could stand on stage as a sugar skull and tell my jokes without it being a huge distraction.
When I heard a knock on the toilet door, I'd realised I have been looking at myself for far too long and people were wondering where I had got to. Roll on three hours of eating jelly works, pumpkin cakes and drinking everything in sight , including a fire extinguisher filled with 2 bottles of Sambuca and a bottle of Vodka, things started to get a little.... Cloudy. I knew I didn't have a comedy gig to do for the next two days so I could really let me fairy lights down. I vaguely remember putting the Saw doll to bed after she was sick on her hands. Offering chips to Kermit, sorry Donatello. And I also remember dancing the night away with The Mad Hatter and the possessed dolly for a good chunk of the evening.
Fast forward 12 hours and I'm sat slung over the bathroom sink , still wearing the black bra-let from the night before with lumps of salty water rubbed all over my face ( no euphemism intended ) desperately trying to scrub off the glitter, glue, paint and shimmery semi-permanent turquoise eyeliner from my face. As painful as it was, it was worth all the back handed compliments I received!