Itchy's spookily original guide to Halloween attire

halloween banner costume unique

Halloween is one of the year's best excuses for a party. As with birthdays, Christmas and New Year, October 31st is a time to enthusiastically celebrate absolutely nothing.

Come the end of October, you'll dutifully put on your scary mask, spend the night trying to drink through a straw inserted through tiny gap in said mask, and then spend the next day wondering why the hell you celebrated nothing in particular so passionately. The next morning's hangover masks are always scarier than those from the previous evening.

But pointless or not, no one can deny that Halloween is an excellent excuse to dress up. Ghastly ghouls, scream masks, devil outfits – it's everyone's chance to dress to scare. This year, though, why not be more original? Put away those flashing devil's horns (yes, we get it, you're devilishly horny; it's as unoriginal as it is unsubtle) and do something different.

Itchy's got a great idea. This year instead of going down the well-trodden route of traditional ghouls and fiends, think more contemporarily. Put the 2008 back into Halloween 2008.

Who are this year's scariest bastards? Apart from all the serial killers, rapists, and Daily Mail writers, who has struck the most fear into Britain?

Heath Ledger dark knight joker halloween costume scary

It'd be wrong not to start with Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight. The late Mr Ledger struck fear into audiences with his eerily unhinged performance, and Joker costumes (above) are now flying off the shelves in anticipation of 31st October. Could be a slightly unoriginal choice, but will at least spark off a lively debate about exploitation in the fancy dress industry. How appealing.

For those less cinematically-inclined, think about what will be in the news over Halloween. Aside from the usual tales of hooded gangs imaginatively reinterpreting the term 'trick or treat', the big story will be the US elections, which take place on 4th November. Itchy certainly finds the prospect of a septuagenarian Republican becoming America's Biggest Cheese rather terrifying. A McCain facemask would go down a treat.

president election mccain obama barack facemasks

Another villain of 2008 is the entire banking industry. Credit crunch? Bank's fault. Oil prices rising? Blame the bankers. Small splattering of dog turd on your shoe? Probably placed there by an HSBC employee. Bash on a suit and tie, suck on a long cigar, and you'll fit right in with zombies, Satan, and everyone else that revels in people's hatred.

Other despised figures of this year? Those pesky Russians with their delectation for invasion. A furry hat should do it, but maybe wrap yourself in a Russian flag just to be sure. Swigging regularly from a vodka bottle is compulsory; spraying said vodka over a repressed minority and then lighting it is frowned upon.

But for truly terrifying freakiness, the Chinese officials have the perfect answer: Yang Peiyi (below). The powers-that-be in Beijing chose this young singer to perform at the Olympics Opening Ceremony.

Yang Peiyi china olympics 2008 beijing ugly ceremony

Unfortunately someone then decided that she was so grotesquely, gob-smackingly ugly that it would make China look bad if she was on display. To avoid this PR disaster, they drafted in a replacement to lip-synch over Miss Peiyi's singing. After somewhat predictably being busted, China looked far worse than it originally would have done, and the poor singer became the international symbol for unwanted ugliness.

Yang Peiyi facemasks all round.

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