Claudia: I hate Halloween . . . it made my screams real
CLAUDIA Winkleman has confessed that she hates Halloween because ‘two years ago it turned our screams real’.
In 2014, the Strictly host’s young daughter ended up in hospital after her Halloween costume went up in flames.
Eight-year-old Matilda suffered serious burns when her supermarket-bought witch costume was set alight as she walked past a candle.
Miss Winkleman said that although Matilda, now ten, is ‘now OK’, the nightmare incident has left her ‘loathing’ Halloween.
And she urged parents to check that their child’s costume ‘meets the British nightwear flammability standard’.
‘I don’t like Halloween because two years ago it turned out our screams were real,’ the 44-year-old wrote in the Sunday Times.
‘Thanks to the NHS everything is now OK. I just don’t want any of you to go through what we did. So, get yourself a witchy costume, but please get a safe one.’ She also joked that she ‘tried to cancel’ Halloween but that it proved to be ‘overly ambitious’, adding: ‘I hate Halloween. I loathe wobbly skeleton wall hangings, gouged-eyeball sweets, ghoulish pumpkin faces and sticky spiders’ webs.’
Miss Winkleman is married to TV producer Kris Thykier and the couple have three children Jake, 13, Matilda and Arthur, five.
Speaking about the accident in an emotional television interview last year, Miss Winkleman said Matilda’s costume caught fire while they were out trick or treating.
‘I heard her shout and she was on fire,’ she said. ‘She went up, is the only way I know how to describe it, it was a spark and she screamed out for me.
‘It was like those horrific birthday candles that you blow out and then they come back ... I don’t want that to happen to another child.’