I hate getting dressed up. Watching the Met Gala red carpet makes my legs go all itchy. As a child, getting dressed up entailed putting on trousers which had wool in them. And wool made me itch like hell. They’d be the same trousers I’d been forced into the last time I’d been dragged off, in an ecstasy of discomfort, to the wedding of a distant cousin. Alterations would be necessary. I’d stand there while my mum faffed away with pins, ignoring my wails of protest. They are PICKY, I would bleat. Even thinking about wool makes me itch like hell. Wool is my hell. In Room 101, all they’d have to do is put me in a tight-fitting, 100% wool boilersuit and their work would be done.
Eventually, perhaps embarrassed by a child behaving as if he had fleas, action was taken. Silk linings were sewn into the cursed, itchy, picky, scratchy trousers to shield my little legs from the misery. This helped, but only up to a point. Merely knowing the wool was there made me itch. This Little Lord Fauntleroy, covertly clad in silk, would still move gingerly, aching for the moment he could take the bloody things off.
And I’ve not grown out of this. My suit trousers remain lined with silk, as I remain severely averse to dressing up. As I got older, other alterations became necessary. It wasn’t about lengthening the legs as they, unlike my waistline, had stopped growing. As some formal event loomed, I’d dread the moment it came to fastening the trousers. Yep, too tight again. More disappointment in myself. More faff.
There was always some issue. I can’t wear a dinner jacket without looking like a doorman. If I appear anywhere in a bow tie, other guests will start giving me ticket stubs or asking me the way to the toilet. How much easier it is to go out looking like an unmade bed. I must get the picture of me that goes next to my name in the Guardian retaken. I don’t look smart like that. It’s not the real me.
Many years ago, noting my shambolic appearance, some TV producers packed me off, kicking and screaming, to appear on a programme called Style Challenge. This involved being restyled before appearing in front of a live audience in a new outfit. A big mirror was swung around so the subjects could see themselves in the new garb for the first time. Naturally, ignoring my protests, they put me in woollen trousers. Unlined. Misery. But this wasn’t the biggest problem, far from it.
I’d been wondering how they achieved the element of surprise when the guests saw themselves on stage in the big mirror. Surely they knew what they were wearing? It turned out that while the stylists tried different looks on me, I’d be blindfolded. So there I was, in my dressing room, wearing nothing but a blindfold and underpants, while two young women dressed and undressed me.
At one point, with no outfit satisfactory and the recording imminent, they ran off to fetch some more stuff. I took the opportunity to remove the blindfold and go for a wee. Gentlemen reading this will be aware of a risk associated with a quick wee. Yes, standing there waiting for the stylists’ imminent return, I was horrified to see – and I’m sorry to be so coarse as to share this – a small damp patch on my grey briefs.
Panicking, in a desperate attempt to dry the damp patch before the stylists returned, I pressed myself up against a radiator on the wall. And this was the sight which confronted these poor women when they suddenly burst back into the room carrying bundles of fresh clothes. I stared at them. They stared at me. My mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. I couldn’t even pretend I was looking out of a window because the radiator was on a blank wall. And neither could I present the wet patch on my pants by way of explanation, as by now my pants were dry.
Broken, wordless with shame, I re-donned the blindfold so at least I didn’t have to see their appalled faces. The rest of that day is a blank. I don’t even remember the woolly trousers itching. God, I hate getting dressed up.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
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