Masked Singer UK costume designer anticipated ‘Twitter storm’ over Chris Kamara’s ‘basic’ Ghost costume-Sabrina Barr-Entertainment – Metro

When Ghost made his debut on The Masked Singer UK earlier this month, fans were taken aback by just how simple his costume was in comparison to the other singers.

While Phoenix was covered with an ornate feather design and Jellyfish’s magnificent costume came with in-built lighting, Ghost – who turned out to be beloved pundit and former professional footballer Chris Kamara – looked akin to if someone had taken a sheet and placed it over their head.

However, it turns out that was the whole joke with the fun design, which came complete with shiny eyes and red boots, and the ‘Twitter storm’ that followed was completely expected.

During a recent conversation with Metro.co.uk, The Masked Singer UK costume designer Tim Simpson, who’s the managing director of Plunge Creations, explained that the team were prepared for fans on social media to go wild over Ghost’s appearance.

He also admitted that the ensemble was more complicated to bring to life than viewers may have realised.

‘The idea behind Ghost was that it was something that was so simple. That was kind of part of the gag, that we thought with everything else we’ve got going on, we’ve got all these elaborate costumes and all these sort of dotty ideas, to throw one into the mix that looks like the most basic costume you can make, which is a sheet with eyes in it, with holes for eyes,’ Tim outlined.

Chris was excited for how his grandkids would react when they watched his big reveal (Picture: ITV)

‘We thought that would just look really funny against all the others.’

Acknowledging the huge social reaction it received over its simplicity, he added: ‘We were aware that some people were going to go, “Oh my god, they’ve just given up.” And there was going to be a whole Twitter storm around it.

‘Sure enough, we invoked the Twitter storm that we kind of were ready for. People thought we’d lost our minds a little bit. That was what was funny.’

One of the reasons why Tim wanted to go extra simple when it came to Ghost was because he liked the idea of kids trying to recreate the outfit at home, which for other characters might prove too difficult.

The costume design is taken up a notch every year (Picture: Shutterstock/Rex Features/ITV)

‘One of the ideas for me was that lots of our costumes are so complicated and there’s so much going on, that they’re quite out of the reach of a lot of the audience,’ he said.

‘A lot of the audience are kids. And actually, to come up with a costume which for kids, they can actually go, “I can make that! I can look like Ghost, I can look like that character off the telly.” There was something fun about that as well, to go with something simple.’

Nonetheless, Ghost ‘wasn’t as simple as we’d hoped’, Tim confessed, because they had to take into account the way that Chris would move on the stage, plus the fact that he needed to be able to sing clearly before he was unmasked.

‘Actually, it took much longer to make than we thought. Because you can’t just get a sheet and stick it over somebody’s head and expect them to sing on TV, it doesn’t work like that,’ he recalled.

‘Because they’re a grown up, a normal sheet is the wrong weight. So we had to pick specific fabrics that would move in the right way, we had to create a whole sort of subframe underneath the sheet, which would allow the performer to actually sing.’

When Chris was unmasked in the first episode, having delivered a performance of Save the Last Dance for Me by The Drifters, he unveiled a second skeleton-inspired mask underneath his first costume before revealing his face for good.

That gag was Tim’s ‘silly’ idea, the costume designer confessed.

‘I thought, come on, let’s take off a costume, and not only have one simple costume, but then another almost off-the-shelf silly costume,’ he shared.

‘And I thought that was… I don’t know. It’s my silly sense of humour. I hope the audience got the joke.’

The Masked Singer UK returns tonight at 7pm on ITV and ITVX.

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