Most costumed characters bring a presence. The mummy brings a presence and an activity — the mummy-wrap relay, where teams race to wrap one of their own in toilet paper. It is loud, genuinely funny to watch, works for a wide age range at once, and sweeps up in about sixty seconds.

That makes it our pick for the harder rooms: school hall parties, a gym full of mixed year groups, a community event where you need one thing that gets everybody involved rather than a performance a third of them will sit out.

The character himself is comic — slow, confused and perpetually tangled. He is the gentlest of the Halloween line-up after the vampire, which means a younger sibling at a tween party isn't going to have a bad time.