How to find Creature costumes

My show features a few warped and wonderful creatures and as such I’ve been on a bit of a costume mission for the past month or so. These days it seems you can’t find a decent mermaid tail anywhere in the UK. Believe me I searched high and low.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the only mermaid tails available have a slit for your feet so you can stand up! What’s that about?! Everyone knows mermaids can’t stand up and this kind of inaccuracy drives me mad. Fortunately I found an international website which (“ahem”) specialised in realistic looking mermaid tails which are so good you can literally swim in them. Picking it up from the sorting office was a wee bit embarrassing I admit. The postman couldn’t really hide his smirk as he handed over the large rubber/latex concoction that was The Tail.

From one tail to another. Once I’d realised I would be playing a horse who wanted to be a unicorn I managed to find a horse-like tail quite quickly. The mane however was a different matter. I wanted to add a hairpiece to my own hair as the character is quite girly but being a red head I couldn’t find a ginger hairpiece anywhere. Oh right, so red hair is so hideous that no one would want to add to it? Needless to say I’ve already contacted Shami Chakrabarti about this abuse of human rights. In the end I had to buy a blonde hair piece and dye it ginger using a mixture of acrylic paints. What with the borrower costume, the massive egg, and the gory head this really has been the most prop-tastic show ever. And don’t get me started on the giant Tipp-Ex bottle…