Andy Richardson: Go on, be a sport! It's only fancy dress
There's a man sitting across from the desk and this is what he's wearing.
On his head is a pork pie hat. It doesn't look anything like a pork pie and I'm pretty sure it's not edible. So why it's called a pork pie hat is anyone's guess. Beneath that – and I feel quite strange writing this, because I'm looking at him as I write, and what the man wearing the pork pie hat is thinking is anyone's guess – is a white T-shirt, the sort that's popular in Birmingham's Hurst Street.
He also keeps pulling on his braces like Jude Law might if Jude Law had decided to wear such an outfit for the office on a Friday. Which, to be fair, is unlikely.
If we move lower down – and I'm speaking visually, of course, rather than physically – we are greeted by a pair of lederhosen and a pair of thick white socks. He's sitting beneath a German flag, though discreet enquiries have revealed his dress to be Austrian. So that makes it all alright.
Opposite the Jude Law braces guy are two people wearing wigs. One is definitely a man. My Sherlock Holmes-like desk buddy and I have deduced this much because he has a beard. His wig is black and bob-shaped and he looks very pretty, what, with his beard and girl hair.
He is standing next to another man and slowly tying a silk scarf around his face. And it feels both dark, strange and weird to be writing this. But this is a day in the life of Rio Fancy Dress World – a planet that spins in a separate, arguably dangerous orbit just 30 metres from the sanctuary of this desk. Beside the silk-scarf-tying-man-woman-beard-thing is a creature dressed in white and, incidentally, also wearing white pan stick make-up, whose gender is unknown. He/she has a white robe and a large Japanese flag safety-pinned to the front. There's a wig, no beard and we're kinda unsure what he/she is meant to be.
Welcome, if you will, to the Rio Olympics, Telford-Style. As Andy Murray, Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Greg Rutherford represent the best of British, office workers unite in a vainglorious display of fancy dress japery. Toot toot. We're just grateful that nobody's come as Linford's lunchbox.
Mr Sherlock, the aforementioned mirth-maker, has a funny story about fancy dress. It centres on a party at which things got a bit out of hand. Let's cut straight to the punchline: "So then Al Capone took out Worzel Gummidge with a scything right hook." You have to admit, it's funny.
His other fancy dress story is about Ali G. Apparently, he once went to the gents, where he was greeted by a man dressed as Ali G. "He was quite apologetic about it," mirth-maker says. As well he might have been.
I've never dressed in fancy dress – except for the Captain Sensible incident, I told you about it a couple of months ago and some of you found it so funny that you tweeted pictures of the red-beret-wearing punk, for which I ought to thank you. For me, if the choice is Vivienne Westwood or something plastic from Mr Benn's fancy dress emporium, I'm down with the dame.
My CV does, however – and here we segueway neatly back to all things Olympic, after the unexpected discourse about Fancy Dress Kink – include real life Olympic experience. Before London 2012, a group of non-fancy-dress-wearing would-be athletes were invited to put the Olympic track to the test in a fiercely competitive 10k. Unfit office workers swapped Paul Smith suits for Asics trainers and raced round in something under 50 minutes. As a stadium full of friends and family cheered us on and a Samba band played, we enjoyed our moment of Bolt-esque glory as we raced down the track. The theme tune to Chariots of Fire played secretly in the back of our minds as put in a final effort to shave seconds from our time.
We were nothing, of course, compared to the main event. With the exception of a few pesky drug cheats, London 2012 was a glorious celebration of Britishness, of sport, of Queens with James Bonds, of brilliant music, astonishing sportsmanship and Bradley Wiggins sitting on a golden throne giving his fans a Winston Churchill-esque victory sign.
As Rio evolves, we're doing the same now as we enjoy Herculean feats of bravery, determination and sportsmanship.
But then I'm not sure. Much as I enjoy a night in front of the box watching running, throwing, jumping and fighting, a day at the office watching colleagues humiliate themselves while dressed as bearded women is far funnier. Viva internationalism. Viva Rio. Viva the Olympics. Or, as the lederhosen-wearing man/woman/bearded people round these parts say: es ist schon komisch, ja*.
(*It's funny, yes)
