100 YEARS OLD AND STILL HORRIFIED BY WAXWORKS...

EXCUSE me if I seem a little jittery but I am still recovering from being scared out of my wits. Madame Tussauds, you see, have just launched their Alien: Escape extravaganza and I was invited to sample it.

I went along mainly in the hope of meeting Sigourney Weaver, who I was confident would get me out of any scrapes with aliens I might encounter, but sadly she did not seem to be there.

That was frightening enough but then I was ushered into some sort of spacecraft where half the crew seemed to have been eaten by aliens. Then some actors, portraying military types, started barking orders at me consisting mainly of instructions to run if I didn’t want the aliens to get me.

A rather terrified lady kept her hand on my back as I fled in the hope that I would lead her to safety, while some loud noises and very convincing waxwork aliens kept popping up to add to the jumpiness. I was relieved to reach the end intact but that was far from the scariest part of the evening.

Before heading to the spacecraft, we had all been entertained at a little party with popcorn, lollies and a fizzy drink that was not Laurent-Perrier Ultra Brut, in the company of waxwork models of celebrities, some of whom I recognised.

Brad Pitt was obvious but there was a lady near him whom I thought (correctly as it turned out) was an actress I felt certain I had seen before but was unable to put a name to.

“Who,” I asked a helpful young Tussauds staff person, “is that?”

“That’s Kate Winslet,” she informed me, and I looked more closely.

The face indeed was an excellent facsimile of that of Ms Winslet, but there was something about the rest of the waxwork that I found disturbing. It was, I soon realised, the upper torso. The bulge of wax breasts straining at her frock looked to me rather false.

Surely, I told myself, the delectable Ms Winslet does not have such unconvincing breast implants and if she has, would I not have noticed when enjoying one of her film appearances?

I examined what I could see of her mammary appurtenances again and a truly horrific thought occurred to me: What if this is not, as I had assumed, a waxwork model of Ms Winslet but is the lady herself, come along to take a sneaky look at the Alien: Escape experience and wearing a disguise of unconvincing implants in the hope that nobody would recognise her?

I approached her in order to test my hypothesis and she didn’t even blink, which I felt is exactly the way an actress of her calibre would have behaved in the circumstances. So I winked at her, told her that her secret was safe with me, and wandered off to tell Brad Pitt all about it.

Then, after the light relief of the Alien: Escape, I took a quick walk through the glories of the rest of Madame Tussauds and experienced the biggest shock of all when I saw the political waxwork celebs.

There was a very convincing Donald Trump just across the floor from a far less convincing Winston Churchill. Now that, I maintain, is true horror.