Sorry Guy Fawkes, but I’m afraid Halloween night gets my vote so it’s pumpkins and Haribos all round

When did Halloween become a Thing here? Not that long ago, I’m sure. Certainly less than a generation ago pumpkins were just a large orange vegetable nobody ate, let alone carved into a grinning gargoyle, and ‘Trick or Treat’ was something we saw American kids do in horror films and laughed at them for their funny foreign ways. If you don’t believe me, look at the stats: just 15 years ago the UK spent £12 million on Halloween – this year the figure is likely to go past £500 million and poor old Guy Fawkes will barely get a look in.

Nowadays, you can’t approach the end of October without pumpkins piling up outside the greengrocers and newsagents filling up with family-sized Haribos in readiness for the night of the year adults fear the most. You know the one, when you have to go to the shops to stock up on those packets of brightly-coloured foul-tasting candy for fear of having your front door and windows sprayed with strings of foam. If not, you face the worse fate of being labelled a grouch by all your neighbours’ children, earning the scorn and derision of the adults – only you’ll never know which ones because you won’t have recognised the children you were rude to because they were all dressed up like vampires and ghouls or had their heads covered in a latex mask. And, living in a street with three schools in it, I for one don’t want to spend the rest of the year being the guy the kids point at every morning with the parents glancing over and shaking their heads sadly. So I’m a Haribo man every time.

Of course I know how to avoid it. Many of my friends either go out for the night (my chosen avoidance tactic, if possible) or, in my sister’s case, close the shutters, draw the curtains, turn off the lights and hide at the back of the house between the danger hours of 6 and 9 o’clock. But that seems like an awful lot of trouble and deprivation to inflict on oneself just to avoid the once-a-year ritual of opening the door, pretending to be terrified at a child dressed up like a corpse bride or a chainsaw killer, and grinning insincerely while offering them a bowl of unpleasantly sour sweets from a garishly-coloured packet. Frankly, in these days of Sky+ I can’t see any compelling argument not to do so, unless you’re at a crucial point of cooking your dinner (behind closed curtains, obvs). Especially when it’s quite fun to turn the tables by dressing up yourself, so that when you open the door they’re greeted with a terrifying apparition in a velour tracksuit and string vest sporting a silver wig and gold medal on a chain that beckons them in while croaking: “I’ve been expecting you...”

Anyway, I was thinking about all of this the other day in Abney Park cemetery, where a group of actors in Victorian costume capered about in the dark telling a largely incomprehensible story about a missing girl while we, the audience, were led around the gravestones by torchlight by a man who looked as if his day job was in a death metal band (leather trenchcoat, ponytail, long pointy beard). He was scarier than the cast members in corpse make-up hissing from the shadows, but part of me couldn’t help feeling that, for a really scary experience, I would have come here on another night when the only occupants of the graveyard would be cider-swilling teenagers smoking skunk while their parents think they’re doing their homework, and the occasional dogger.

At least the event – ‘Fear in the Dark’ - was recognisably Halloween-flavoured, with a story channelling Edgar Allen Poe, who went to school around the corner from this cemetery, and was based around the myths of All Souls Day. Unlike my experience of Halloween in the USA, which seems to be one big fancy-dress party where teens get drunk and try to cop off with each other while dressed as cartoon characters: a sort of Autumn Break filtered through Disney. While there are skeletons and witches aplenty, you’re just as likely to encounter a girl dressed as Minnie Mouse or Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz as you are to be attacked by a chainsaw-wielding serial killer or a sinister surgeon in bloodstained scrubs. I had the same experience a year or two back in Camden Town when I emerged from a gig to find the streets filled with gangs of nuns in fishnet stockings and groups of doctors wielding bloody scalpels and began to fear I’d stumbled into the hen party/stag do from hell.

This year, of course, there’s a new element to it all with attempts to ban Halloween outfits that cause offence. Sorry, that should read “offence” – I’ve never met anyone who was *actually* offended by someone in fancy dress. Anyway, those nice Canadians, who always seem such a liberal lot compared to their Christianity-crazed neighbours to the south, have taken offence at costumes that reek of cultural appropriation – again, that should probably read “cultural appropriation” - and political correctness (insert your own inverted commas). An educational establishment called Brock University (me neither) has issued helpful instructions to its students to avoid trouble, citing concerns about “reinforcing harmful stereotypes around race, gender, culture and mental health”. Meanwhile in Florida, another uni is offering counselling in case any Halloween costumes cause “triggering” issues among its students.

Banned outfits range from any sort of “national costume” (Arab and Native American, African chiefs and Geisha girls, leprachauns and those hilarious Scottish ones with an orange wig and a tartan tam o’shanter, plus anyone with a bindi, which is bad news for all those posh hippie girls who spent their gap year in India) to “inappropriate” outfits relating to current events, (the lawyers are watching so I’ll leave that list to you) though I’m pleased to see there has been a backlash at Yale University (yes I’ve heard of that one), where a new college head has announced controversially that students should wear anything they damn well please because, you know, you’re only young once and if people are offended they can either tell the offender why or – get this, and take a deep breath – ignore it.

Alternatively, you could wait a week and do it the proper British way without causing any offence to anyone – by burning a Catholic on a bonfire.