Trick or Terror?

With Halloween fast approaching, the burning question is what will this year's favourite costume for trick or treaters be?  The last few years have seen much manufactured controversy on the part of the media about various 'sick' costumes sold by supermarkets and other retail outlets.  These have included such things as the 'mental patient' outfit and various serial killer costumes (including plastic knives, meat cleavers and axes).  Bearing in mind the amount of highly sensationalised stories the tabloids happily print about gruesome murders and mass killers - and the amount of circulation they get from such stories - I find their self-righteousness on the subject of such Halloween costumes more than a little hypocritical.  Besides, does anyone really think that children's perceptions of mental health issues are really going to be affected by some cheap supermarket Halloween costume? 

As long-term readers will recall, I've always favoured the Jihadi suicide bomber (complete with plastic sticks of dynamite and fake detonator) as a contemporary Halloween costume.  To be honest, I'm surprised that the press hasn't already latched onto the possibilities for linking terrorists to Halloween.  I'm amazed that they've been able to resist the temptation to run stories about Muslim extremists dressing as suicide bombers, mingling with  trick or treating youngsters and blowing up householders who refuse to give them sweets.  Or Islamic terrorists smearing door knobs with ricin so that trick or treating children are poisoned.  It doesn't matter that none of it is true - it could happen and that's usually enough for the tabloids to justify running stuff like this.  But to get back to the original point, I'd like to think that this year's 'must have' Halloween costume will be the 'Jimmy Saville' (complete with blonde wig, plastic cigars and jangly gold jewellery).  After all, he's fast becoming the nation's number one bogey man, considered so dangerous that, despite being dead, his image apparently has to be removed from every archived edition of Top of the Pops and his name expunged from broadcasting history.  Perhaps some enterprising supermarket could come up with a themed set of such costumes - 'Showbiz Peados of the Twenty First Century - including Stuart Hall and Rolf Harris (complete with plastic stick on beard and didgereedoo).