BY the time this appears in print I will have spent an evening with a black raven made of foam and feathers attached to my shoulder, chatting to the likes of Zorro and Marilyn Monroe.

The party theme is film characters. Diane Keaton's Annie Hall was my first choice.

New York eccentric in baggy chinos seemed a straightforward alternative to the typical fiddly and itchy fancy dress costume.

I was persuaded, however, to opt for classic movie star glamour with an edge and so instead of imitating a kooky love interest, I've agreed to attempt a middle-aged version of the Melanie Daniels character in Hitchcock’s The Birds.

The fiddly box will definitely be ticked – how best to attach a fake bird, then mix and mingle without it toppling and stabbing in the neck with its pointy beak?

The actress Tippi Hedren suffered injuries for her art but I will pass on the trip to A&E.

What's good about fancy dress though is that between the character guesswork, costumes that go awry, and films which have inspired us, we will all have an easy opening gambit for conversation. So the chances are pretty good that we'll be able to fast track the usual party small talk – ‘how do you know the host?’ and ‘what do you do?’ - before getting on to something interesting like the themes in Hitchcock classics.

The modern fancy dress party originated with 18th century masked balls.

People have long sought anonymity or disguise as a way to escape the natural tendency of others to use information such as where we live and what we do for a living to form an opinion about the sort of person we are.

And then the conversation tends to fall into a boring or too-familiar trap.

A colleague recently told me about a fellow student on the art course she attends once a year who spotted her at work and then told the whole class. “I was furious,”

she said. “My cover was blown.”

She did the class to relax from her demanding job, and it suddenly no longer felt like a haven from the assumptions and expectations people make about her in her professional life.

Dressing up is one of the most obvious ways to adopt an identity, but we all enjoy the occasional mini-break from the self we are most of the time.

Just as well – you probably learn a lot more about someone by talking about their favourite film or the art they’re making than you ever would through small talk.