had to stay off social media for most of last Thursday because the shame was just too much. Like world peace, who could possibly be against World Book Day? Anything that encourages children to read is a good thing.

And yet the day brings me out in a cold sweat in a way you probably won’t understand. Unless, that is, you have ever struggled to make an improvised Aliens

costume in the middle of the night – constructing eyes from hastily gathered polystyrene balls, while simultaneously creating a dodgy-looking spindle for Sleeping Beauty out of some discarded wool and a left-over pipecleaner.

So competitive can World Book Day get that in the run-up to it I saw parents on one Facebook page refusing to reveal what they were creating in case someone copied it.

But even if you manage to get to school with alien eyes intact, your heart sinks when you look online at the marvellous creations inspired by much more erudite books. Of course, these are never the costumes ordered last-minute from Amazon Prime; I saw one homemade Cat in the Hat that was surely destined for the V&A, while a Thomas the Tank Engine costume should have been fasttracked to the London Transport Museum.

Still, I am relieved that I’m not the mother whose child’s costume caused the most surprise online. I’m not talking about Nicola Scholes, who was still trying to justify letting her son go to school as Christian “Fifty Shades of” Grey, complete with mask and cable ties the day afterwards. No, I’m referring to Myleene Klass’s amusing decision to send both her daughters to school dressed as miniature versions of herself – armed with Klass’s own epic tome Things To Make and Do With Your Children. Which presumably doesn’t include a Cat in the Hat World Book Day costume…