Who's the Daddy: Scream and shout about life

What’s the most terrifying thing about Halloween?
Who's the DaddyWho's the Daddy
Who's the Daddy

Let me tell you, when your daughter and her uni friends go out for the night as the three ages of Britney Spears and she sends a video clip of herself to the family group chat, lip-syncing to Oops!… I Did It Again while dressed in the skin-tight PVC catsuit Britney wore in the video.

The last thing I remember before fainting was the boss’ face as it went ashen. After I regained consciousness my chest felt tight, my left arm went all numb and there was a loud ringing noise in my right ear. The thing is though, when did Halloween become a thing?

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Probably around the same time school proms made their way across the Atlantic from the US, when everyone literally makes a big song and dance about leaving school, an event so predictable and mundane it happens to literally everyone.

Back in the day Halloween was notable for two reasons. Your dad nearly slicing off his fingers while doing his best to carve a lantern out of a rock solid turnip, and causing public nuisance with light-hearted destruction of property of the people who were unlucky enough to live on your street.

This included knocking on doors and running away, lifting gates off their hinges and hurling them on the owners’ front lawn and breaking the Romney Park garden hopping record, which I’m led to believe still stands to this day. All good clean fun. Fast forward a few decades and Halloween has turned into what The Simpsons called Christmas Two. The socially challenged male writers on 30 Rock in particular loved it for the simple reason young ladies dressed sluttily and got wasted. Yeah, that hasn’t aged well.

But as for the best Halloween ever? Easy. October 31, 1990. Standing on a raucous Stretford End with my mate FT on his 21st birthday watching Fergie’s resurgent United rip Liverpool a new one in the League Cup. I send him a YouTube link to the highlights in a text every year in lieu of a card. Ex-Liverpool fan who has supported Middlesbrough through thin and thinner since the mid-1990s. How times change.