Peter Pan. Robin Hood. And a US beauty pageant.

If anyone watches the fantastically funny Big Bang Theory you may remember an episode where the gang excitedly don fancy dress for a party at Penny’s.

Comic geeks to a man, they all turn up as costumed hero The Flash but eventually have to settle on different guises to avoid looking like complete fools.

So, Leonard becomes Frodo the Hobbit, Raj the Norse God Thor and Sheldon transforms in to the Doppler Effect. You probably have to follow the show to really get why.

But what of Howard? Well, he dons green tights, tunic and feathered hat to become Robin Hood… then spends the whole night forlornly being mistaken for the little boy who never grew up, Peter Pan.

Funny as it may seem, I know exactly how he felt. And every time I see that episode, I chuckle a little louder.

I’ve done some odd things during a career that has spanned newspapers, retail communications and travel and tourism PR. Strangely, quite a few of the most bizarre seem to revolve around beauty pageants back in my newspaper reporter days.

Being an extra dressed as a knight in a televised Miss UK extravaganza was certainly one. Welcoming all the Miss World contestants to Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in 1988 was another.

But back to Peter Pan… erm, I mean Robin Hood.

It all came about when I accompanied our own Miss Sherwood Forest during a guest-of-honour American tour to the Miss Ohio USA Pageant in the early 1990s.

Stand out highlights of that trip include a guest slot on the local radio talk show and getting an all-American VIP giant scoreboard welcome at a Cleveland Indians baseball game.

But my Peter Pan moment was certainly the oddest.

Beauty pageants are big deals in the US, or at least they were. Part of the celebrations for the week-long Miss Ohio Pageant was a carnival parade through the city centre, with our Miss Sherwood Forest a guest in one of the convertible cars forming the cavalcade.

As a representative of Sherwood Forest, fittingly she was dressed as Maid Marion. Clearly I could only be one person, the man in Lincoln Green, the leader of Merry Men.

So, a few thousand miles from home in the midst of a ticker tape parade and with 35,000 people lining the streets, there I sat resplendent in green tunic and far-too-figure-hugging green tights. All topped off with green felt hat complete with feather.

Obviously Robin Hood right?

Well not to our American cousins. After 20 minutes of smiling crowds constantly shouting “Look, there’s Peter Pan”, I simply surrendered to popular will and went with the flow.

Sadly, one picture does still exist.

Enjoy!

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