The ‘living statue' restaurant

Gruesome nightmare or interesting talking point?

Welcome to Living Tables

When the table appears to be dressed as Marilyn Monroe and hands you a vol-auvent, it's probably time to slow down on the banana daiquiris. And when the watermelon in the centre of a fruit bowl opens its eyes and talks to you, it's definitely time to call a taxi.

Unless you're somewhere near Orlando, Florida.

As if the city of umpteen theme parks and fat-legged Midwesterners in plaid shorts wasn't already weird enough, an enterprising make-up artist called Julie Winterhalter has decided to finish the job of driving all the local residents over the edge into stark staring insanity by coming up with what she calls ‘living art' for party catering.

It's actually a development of that wellknown tourist-fleecing device, the ‘living statue'.

You know how it works: some skint drama student cobbles together a vaguely historic looking costume out of loo roll tubes and bin bags, sprays themselves silver and stands stock-still on a little stool in a public place rammed with gullible families.

Small child approaches curiously, ‘statue'

makes sudden movement, child is frightened senseless, parents throw money.

Repeat until arrested.

Winterhalter's genius idea was to extend that idea into the party milieu. As a professional make up artist and hairdresser, she was often approached to help with entertainment of the bodypainted ‘living statue' type. Then she saw a table of snacks… and one of the world's most disturbing ideas was born.

The range of themes that she offers go all the way from all-American kitsch (Marilyn, stars-and-stripes heroine Betsy Ross, wacky tourists, Polynesian dancers) to vaguely international (Venetian gondoliers, French style mime artists, African queens, geisha girls) to deep inside the world of weird with vampiresses, space creatures of sub-Blakes 7 ludicrousness, Grecian statues and a particularly deranged Carmen Miranda. But that's not the scariest part. Because she's gone one step further into shock shlock with her Talking Head Tables.These are basically some poor actor or actress, face painted mercilessly, crouched under a table with only their head sticking through a hole. They can loosely resemble a pineapple, a watermelon, a pumpkin – so far, so obvious, though the effect when an unsuspecting guest passes a display of fruit and it starts talking to them must still stretch the resources of the local cardiac arrest unit.

But there are further options, including a Mexican head that pops up from under a cunningly placed sombrero, a Carmen Miranda lookalike, complete with fruit bowl hat, and for some bizarre reason two simulacra of the Wright Brothers. Or an alien. Or a football. Or a Christmas present.

Or a corpse. No, really.

Your Living Tables are only limited by your budget, imagination and willingness to scare the heebie-jeebies out of your invitees. See the full range at www.makeupbyjulie.com.

Don't say we didn't warn you…