@fentonsteve revealed on the Rocky thread that he and his other half dressed as Renee (her) and Yvette (him) from Allo Allo and then they attempted to hitchhike to Paris! The English side was fine, immediately picked up – but there was no success on the French side, amazingly.
About 20 years ago I was in my late thirties and we were invited to a themed party where we were encouraged to dress as movie stars. I’m usually quite half-hearted with these things – but I had a really dumb idea and we went with it. Basically, Mrs BC and I came as Austin Powers and Marilyn Monroe. And we told people that this was what we were going to do.
Given that Austin Powers was my nickname already due to my London-ish accent & Austin being my actual name – and my wife can certainly carry off a convincing Marilyn, everyone assumed that this was what was on the cards.
I can tell you’re ahead of me here. We did a switcheroo, where I was Marilyn and SHE was Mr Powers. As you can imagine, the make up challenge was immense, so we looked up a professional make up person who offered her services for films and TV and she transformed my appearance quite dramatically. A local costume shop had a Marilyn dress (the white one) and they also had white size 12 stilettos. I’m 6 foot 5 in my socks, so the monster that was created was nearly 7 feet tall. All evidence of hair from face, shoulders, chest. armpits and legs was removed. My teeth were white enough in those days. so that was good. And of course a wig.
Despite the *enormous* drag factor of my natural appearance, I scrubbed up OK – even eliciting what seemed to be genuine remarks on how pretty I was.
I was a lot thinner in those days, which helped.
The party was in a room above a busy Auckland pub and in those days you could smoke in the main bar. The party didn’t want smoking, so at one point me and “Russell Crowe” (real name Henry, dressed as the Master Commander thing) – fueled by a few drinks already taken – decided to enter the public area and have a couple of fags at the bar.
In the public bar, there weren’t sideways glances and suppressed sniggers – it was full on loud and immediate ridicule and largely good natured banter. I didn’t vamp it up, I was a bloke in a dress having a pint and a fag. I didn’t have to pay for my drinks, they just appeared seemingly from nowhere. We were surrounded by pissed up locals trying to chat me up with me and “Russell” telling them to get fucked but accepting the free drinks. All of which was great fun.
A loud, small man kept putting his hand up my skirt for comedy, which was an OK joke for a bit – but he took it too far, which prompted me to be physically menacing to someone for the only time in my life. I knew I had the backing of “Russell” and,
perhaps, my new friends at the bar so I felt I could really intimidate him. He backed away, called me a lot of really horrible names and he left the place. Cheers rang out and more drinks appeared. I couldn’t drink them all as we had to go back to the main party upstairs.
So I’d like to know if you, like me and @fentonsteve, have ever dressed up and if so…(David Coleman voice) what happened next?
Oddly enough I’d been looking for this photo recently.
It was a chum’s 40th birthday so with a friend we went as Groucho and Harpo. I’d made cut-out cardboard eyebrows and a moustache which I attached to the glasses, but when I took them off I’d done greasepaint eyebrows and moustache. underneath which I thought added that extra element. I didn’t get fondled but I did win first prize beating the other Groucho there.
I never forget a face…but in your case I’ll make an exception.
Very good effort – well deserving of the first prize.
We used to wear fancy dress for New Year’s Eve party at our local pub. One of my friends went as Harpo and then didn’t speak the whole night!
I once went to a fetish party as Steffi Graf.
Err, me again. In 1995, to celebrate 40 years of VE day, our Stilton Cheese Rolling* costumes were WWII RAF uniforms.
Not only that, but over the course of a couple of months in my future Best Man’s dad’s garage, we’d constructed a scale-model** wooden Lancaster bomber big enough for the four of us to fit inside. And we had the Dambuster’s Theme playing over the Tannoy as we paraded up and down Stilton high street. The audience loved it.
The fancy dress prize was won by four squaddies dressed in kinky ladies underwear. There were boos and a slow handclap from the crowd. Still, we knew what to do.
In 1996, I borrowed my gran’s village hall tea urn and trolley, and we went dressed as the ladies from Last of the Summer Wine. It turns out I can do quite a good (though skinny) Norah Batty***.
We won the fancy dress *and* the cheese rolling competition itself, the first time since the 1960s that a team had achieved “the double”. We were in the news – the Peterborough Evening Telegraph**** and on the telly (a few seconds of the ‘in other news’ of the teatime 5-minute Anglia News insert).
I sat by the phone all year, but the Olympics committee never called.
My best man moved to Oz in early 1997, so we never got to defend our title.
My 1996 World Champion trophy lives on top of my bedside radio alarm clock. I used to include it in my CV, but people would expect a beer monster, not a slightly dull engineer.
(*) my Best Man is from Stilton, although currently residing in Sydney.
(**) so big a scale that we couldn’t get it from his parents’ house to the high street without taking the wings off again.
(***) The future Mrs F decided there and then that this was actually the man she wanted to marry.
(****) I have a scan of that.
I did a lol to the Nora Barry footnote. Those enterprises sound thoroughly ridiculous and stupid – and very funny.
For most of my life, it’s been hard enough getting me to dress respectably just for going out in public, so fancy dress requirements used to strike me with dread. However, now that I’ve reached the ‘beyond caring’ stage of life, I am rather more up for it.
I think it was friends’ wedding with a Midsummer Night’s Dream theme that turned things. I decided to go the whole hog and went as Henry VIII and, frankly, I stole it, even among the velvet gowns and codpieces.
I once went to an 80’s fancy dress party as Adam Ant in the Prince Charming look. I looked pretty good if I say so miyself and all was good until a few drinks later, the DJ put on Prince Charming and I was made to lead the party in the shite, line dancingesque dance routine. For the whole song.
Lesson learnt.
Ridicule is nothing to be scared of.
*applause*
Dress up all the time – any time we throw a big party it’s fancy dress.
A few weeks ago I went to a 90s-themed party as Patrick Bateman. Suit, braces, slicked back hair, old school headphones and business cards with the watermark. Also wore the plastic raincoat for the start of the evening. When I arrived someone asked if I’d come as Inspector Gadget 😂
Two weeks ago we had a big party for the end of school. Theme was criminals, so I went in an orange jumpsuit with sleeve tattoos. On the way to the party I spotted a police car so knocked on the window, explained the situation and got them to take a photo where it looked like they were nicking me. Sent it to the party WhatsApp group with a note saying been delayed, you may have to start without me.
Today I’m at a festival (Wilderness, very middle class), so I’ve got a face full of glitter, a bunch of fake butterfly tattoos and a sparkly sweatshirt covered in sequins. Saw Orbital last night, they were great. Supergrass later on.
I’ve done Rocky Horror in costume before. Great night out – most nights out are improved by everyone wearing something daft.
Another amateur furter here, I confess.
Way back when, little kids and all that, we were part of a village set that decided a fancy dress party every month was a good idea. We were less well-off than most of our friends so for most of these Wife No1 made our costumes from scratch. We were due to leave the village so thought “Let’s splash out and go the whole hog, a proper Fancy Dress Shop”.
Twas a French evening so I splashed out, a Musketeer, the whole works, hat, sword, tight trousers, twirly moustache . Walked in waiting for admiring glances from the blokes and the inevitable rush of bored young housewives to my side
Turns out 4 other chaps had the same idea. Oh, how we laughed. Never been so embarrassed in my life. Went home early. Never again
Damn, if only it had been just three – you could have been D’Artagnan!
I once went to a fancy-dress shindig by channeling the Buffy character Oz’s brainwave of going as God… literally a sticky label on my chest pocket with ‘God’ written on it. How cool was I?
As a child, I once won a fancy dress competition as Gary Glitter. How cool was I?
I once went straigt from work to a fancy-dress party in my suit and tie.
“I’ve come as the Director of Public Prosecutions” as he was in the news that week.
There was a tradition at my school that the graduating classes had Fancy Dress Day the day before graduation, so no classes, usually a lot of booze drunk before they showed up at the school grounds, and a conga line through the classrooms, before occasionally ending with a school-book burning in the school yard…
The year I graduated me and my BF decided to go as a fallen angel (me) and a prostitute (her). We used to skip classes a lot and gave our teachers a headache most of the time, so this was our way to play up to our “bad reputations”. I had moved away from the area I grew up in, but still went to that school, so I made my friend stay over at my place the night before so I wouldn’t have to take the metro in full costume alone in rush hour traffic. Good decision, because the stares and laughs would have been embarrassing had I been alone…
I made my costume from an old S:t Lucia-dress (a white floor-long cotton nightie, basically) which I cut to miniskirt length, cut the sleeves shorter, cut a deep neckline, and added big black wings onto its back. All over the dress I added patches I made where I’d written rude punny jokes on the topics of religion, sex and sinning. I also made a halo from a long piece of wire that I bent into two connected circles, one that went around my head and one (clad in thick Christmas tinsel) that hovered above it, but bent in a way that looked as if it had slid down to the side of my head, ready to fall off at any sinful moment. Add to that a studded leather belt, fishnet stockings, high heeled pumps, some punk-y chains around my neck and a ton of theatre make-up, including black lips (and black nails), and voila! I looked as if I was ready to stray even further from the narrow paths.
My friend borrowed a tight miniskirt from her mum, a tight red velvet top from my mum, high heeled boots from a friend, and a ton of make-up to get that slutty look she aimed for.
Which worked well, because we had arranged to meet up with her dad at the metro station so he could take us to her mum’s workplace (a petrol station near the school) that morning, to show off our costumes, and he got extremely embarrassed to let us into his car, fearing that somebody would get the wrong idea.
And her mum quickly made us leave the petrol station because she thought we looked too scandalous!
Our ultimate goal with our costumes was later fulfilled when our head teacher (and arch enemy) who was very religious, saw us in the school yard and walked past us, lips pinched like she was sucking a lemon, staring straight ahead as if she couldn’t see us, refusing to acknowledge us or say hello. That made us laugh triumphantly for the rest of the day!
Good result Locust!
As we say in Sweden: “A small revenge is still revenge”… 😀
I don’t don costume.
Except I will be in 2 weeks’ time. It’s Henley on Todd, and I have been drafted into one of the navies for the ‘fight’. I will therefore be in some kind of Navy costume that you can buy online.
My wife “took care of” the purchasing. That’s not entirely out of the question
For a second there I was thinking that you were lining up a Don Henley reference…
For the pub landlord’s birthday, a year before the great lockdown, his missus suggested a fancy dress night.
The pub landlord is from Norway and has ginger hair and a big bushy beard, so it was arranged, unknown to him, that everybody would, as well as our various costumes, be wearing ginger wigs and false bushy beards. Including his wife and all of the ladies.
One indian guy turned up in full valkyrie drag and horned helmet (plus plaited wig and beard of course). The very camp young barman wore a very short miniskirt and fishnet tights. Looked like he’d shaved his legs too.
I wore a bright orange Guantanamo boilersuit with a ball and chain.
What a cheapskate! Fancy turning up in your everyday clobber. Tch.
Who would have thought Guantanamo had a day-release scheme?
Thought I should add this story from last year. Now, I’m not normally a fancy dress/dress up kind of bloke. I used to do a bit of charity shop suit wearing back in my youth, when we’d all dress rather badly and go to the pub, but neither me nor any of my friends would all dress up as Smurfs (or whatever else they might do on the Otley run nowadays). So, imagine my family’s surprise when I suggested before heading off to a festival last year “shall we all go in some sort of fancy dress?” As everyone was in agreement we then spent a few days mulling over the options available to us. Eventually we settled on the Spanish Inquisition from Monty Python (although there were four of us), as the outfits appeared to be cheaper than the next option, Sgt. Pepper (Actually, it’s worth pointing out that most Beatles fancy dress is totally inaccurate, with the wrong colours, wrong beatle wigs and wrong coloured glasses). And so it came to pass that me, Mrs. Paws, Mini Paws and her friend dressed as Cardinal Biggles, Fang and Two lots of Cardinal Ximenez. It was really rather good fun. Most people smiled at us, gave us thumbs up or came up to us and had nice things to say, although only one person got the Monty Python reference (bit obscure, I guess).
We’re back off to the same festival in nine days time. Probably a bit too late to order any other fancy dress and perhaps a bit too warm to go as a late fifteenth century inquisition, so chances are we won’t get dressed up again. Even to this day I have no idea why I suggested we go in fancy dress last year. Mid-life crisis I guess.
Aha, @pawsforthought, the old “deadman’s club” school of fashion. So it wasn’t just me and my chums who would buy old fashioned, ill-fitting and uncomfortable second hand suits to wear on a night out on the razzle. And if the “deadman’s” title seems poor show, most were actually purchased from a fine emporium up near Battersea Town Hall, on the way to Clapham Junction, called J.H Deadman.
I once made the mistake of going to a student fancy dress party as a priest – very easy to make a dog collar out of white cardboard and wear it with a black shirt and suit. Despite being only 19 and wearing an obviously fake cardboard cross on a string, most people thought I was a trendy young vicar – and it was a real fun killer.
One third of people get very self conscious and felt they had to be on their best behaviour around me. Another third got into boringly intense conversations with me about religion or were low-level hostile. And the rest were people who sidled up to me when drunk and wanted to tell me their confessions or how they were actually still quite spiritual blah blah … Made me feel sorry for real priests.
Quite a long time ago* some friends in West Wales were leaving to live abroad temporarily and organised a combined leaving party for them and housewarming for the friends who were moving in at their house.
A range of semi-lethal pre-mixed cocktails had been prepared and were lined up in demijohns in the kitchen.
All the local hippy-types were there and some of the younger locals, including the local vicar, who turned up on his motorbike in full dog-collar uniform, said hello and did not stay long. He did not partake of the booze or of the numerous spliffs and pipes that were circulating. His wife and particularly his teenage daughter however, joined in wholeheartedly. Probably the best party I ever went to.
A few years later his daughter was jailed for 5 years, for being involved as the “accountant” for a conspiracy to import large quantities of cannabis by boat further down the coast.
*Late ’70s.
My mate’s girlfriend at the time was a lapsed Catholic, very anti-religion and scathing about my priest fancy dress at that party. She went on to do teacher training and eventually became head of pastoral care at a posh Catholic school!