Fancy dress

Fri.26.12.08. Boxing Day. We have gathered early in the oak before the ‘mad’ Wigan annual fancy dress night gets underway. The participants began to drift in around 7.00pm. Groups of young men sporting green wigs, the ‘umph a lump-as’, I had obviously not a clue who these people were supposed to be as was the case with the many other ‘party goers’ who settled in the pub. There were the usual action heroes with brightly coloured padded suits, cavemen, cave women, characters from musicals, the list was endless. These young people hailed from throughout the northwest such was the notoriety of the event.

The Oak took on something of the ‘Folies’ or the mood of the 19^th. Century Parisian dance hall the ‘Moulin Rouge’. I half expected stumpy Jose Ferrer to waddle up to the bar pursued by Jane Avril, la Gulu and that bloke dancer with the pointed nose and chin. Thinking back, these gaily dressed visitors were no more out of place in the Oak than the normally clad Doctor Dave, Billy Green, the ‘Doc’, or even the ever more boldly dressed Danny Brennan.

If I ever desired that wonderful life of Paris in late quarter of the 1900’s I need look no further than the Oak.