The secrets behind those Masked Singer costumes: tent poles, ice packs and apologies

A sausage and a swan go head to head in a fight for survival. A scene that you might expect to see on a wander in the park, not on prime-time Saturday night television. But that just about sums up the delightful madness of The Masked Singer, the ITV entertainment show that has turned out to be the perfect tonic for this latest lockdown.

Not since The Stig has the nation been so obsessed with “who’s behind the mask?”. With surreal costumes, including a giant melting Blob and a cyberpunk Alien, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were watching an early version of Doctor Who. But friends and families have come together and relished in seeing a sausage sing That’s Not My Name and gasped at the realisation that it was Sir Lenny Henry CBE blasting out pop tunes as The Blob.

We’ve waved goodbye to madcap characters such as Grandfather Clock (Glenn Hoddle), Bush Baby (John Thomson) and Seahorse (Mel B) and tonight's grand final will see either Badger, Robin or Sausage crowned the winner.

Whoever they may turn out to be, and however bonkers the show may appear, its success and widespread appeal has attracted some high-profile names. Those already unmasked this year include Henry, A-ha's Morten Harket and award-winning singers Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Gabrielle.

“No one’s in it for the money, but mainly to surprise their family and friends or to try singing in public if they were perhaps previously scared to,” says Daniel Nettleton, co-founder of production company Bandicoot.

“The motivations for people going on this show are vastly different which has, in turn, opened the doors for an array of names for us to approach. You’re not going to get Morten Harket on I’m a Celebrity… or Sir Lenny Henry on a Saturday-night reality show. It’s unheard of,” he says.

Indeed, the reveal in series one of former Home Secretary Alan Johnson as Pharaoh was perhaps one of the most unlikely moments in recent TV history, coming just after Brexit and days before the Labour leadership contest.

Comedian Sue Perkins, who to the surprise of many was unmasked as Dragon in last weekend’s semi-final, had never felt confident enough to sing as herself, and speaking about signing up for the show, Henry said: "It just felt so utterly counter-intuitive that I had to do it.”

Since launching its second series, The Masked Singer has been a sure-fire hit for ITV, with millions tuning in every week to try to guess which obscured celebrity is singing on stage. Last weekend’s semi-final was TV’s biggest audience, outside of news and sports, so far this year with 7.1million viewers, up 3million from its first episode, which aired on Boxing Day.

The UK’s version of The Masked Singer is based on a South Korean format and made here by Bandicoot, whose purpose is to “devise and produce wild and twisted entertainment and factual entertainment formats”. Well, they certainly do that. How apt, then, that a contest about wearing masks has become one of the biggest hits of the pandemic.

“We must be the only people who are not bothered by a mask-related pandemic that locks everyone in their house,” says executive producer Derek McLean. “We kind of feel like the world has caught up with us. Our security for the show was so strict that we were already keeping people separate, covered up and in bubbles, so we haven’t really needed to change much.”

Nettleton has previously worked on shows with similar elements of secrecy, such as Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity… but says that this is “next level”. The show is filmed in an aircraft hangar in the middle of England. Celebrities are delivered in cars with blacked-out windows. Backstage, they wear visors and hooded anoraks with the words “Don’t speak to me” printed across the front. Audience members who see the reveal sign non-disclosure agreements. And presenter Joel Dommett, who announces the celebrity as they lift off their mask, doesn’t even find out until that very moment either.

“I had always looked up to Lenny Henry on TV and I would never have thought that I’d get to meet him. It’s so strange that the first time I did was when I was strapping him into a giant blob costume, says Tim Simpson, head of Plunge Creations, the Sussex company who make the outlandish costumes. “As I attached his head, he looked skywards as if to say, ‘What am I doing here?’ I just replied: ‘I’m so sorry about this’”

The process starts in the workshop, an area that used to be part of a pickling factory in the South Downs. Simpson is given a brief for a character which is usually just a name, like Viking or Swan, and sets to work. He does not know if it’s a man or a woman who will be in the costume. I can’t resist asking McLean and Nettleton what character they would pick for me. “Lion. No, Jellyfish. No, you’d definitely be Lion,” comes the reply, perhaps inspired by my unruly lockdown mane.

Back in the workshop, the fun starts. Each contestant is given a body double and they are fitted with the costume. There are sometimes requests from production, such as big eyelashes and lipstick for Katherine Jenkins’s Octopus. “I was fairly optimistic that octopuses don’t have lips but, hey, who cares?” says Simpson.

At one point, Sausage was going to have a big red feather boa to look like ketchup, but Simpson was surprised to see the long, blonde hairpiece that Sausage wore in the semi-finals. “That was added by the performer and not us, so we were just as much in the dark!” he says.

“There were, however, some clues on Bush Baby - an anagram could be found in the lettered blocks on his babygrow.” Look closely, too, and you might see a clue in one of the badges on Badger’s leather jacket.

Simpson’s team have previously taken on such wild projects as creating a life-size Benedict Cumberbatch made out of chocolate, covering a van in 150,000 pieces of Lego and making the Spitting Image versions of Prince Harry and Melania Trump. But creating these unwieldy costumes for a full-on performance is no easy task. Gabrielle, who was unmasked in the semi-final, revealed that she suffered panic attacks while dressed in her hot and heavy Harlequin costume, going so far as to describe childbirth as being easier. Cold Feet actor John Thomson, who was revealed to be Bush Baby earlier in the series, also described his experience as “Hell on earth” due to the heat inside his furry outfit.

Simpson explains: “Harlequin’s mask had large eyeholes. But the further away you take them from the face, the harder it is for the performer to function. So hers were quite close and no doubt she will have felt hemmed in. It is a large costume - 8ft across and is held together with fibreglass tent poles. We also have to cover the neck, making it harder to breathe, and therefore sing. I mean, blimey, it’s full on.”

However, the team go to great lengths to ensure their comfort. “We put more ventilation in the top of Harlequin’s head and changed the angle of the mask to create more airflow. Bush Baby had an entire fur suit under his yellow babygrow so that he moved more authentically. We cut large holes in the ears and put vents in the top of his head and strapped ice packs to his body to cool him down. Dragon and Blob were the heaviest of all, weighing in at 9 kilos.”

Signing up some celebrities could, however, be seen as a risk. Spice Girl Mel B, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Gabrielle all have distinct singing tones and therefore, surely, quite easy to guess. However, McLean and Nettleton reveal that the contestants are given vocal coaches to help change their inflections.

As for the clues: “We never lie,” they both state firmly. “Sometimes we lead you down a certain path so that you might think it’s someone else, but we don’t lie. There is always a link back to the celebrity from every clue. Of course, we do want them to guess the identity eventually. I guess it’s like a good whodunit… be that Agatha Christie or Dallas!”

So what of the fans who play along each week, revealing their findings on social media and potentially spoiling the results? “It does make you realise that the British public are as sharp as anything and the lengths they go to to find out - delving into old newspaper interviews from years gone by to confirm tiny hints. But we really love how much the public love playing detective, too,” says McLean.

Some might say that the show has been too easy this year, with viewers naming artists such as Aston Merrygold, Ne-Yo and Joss Stone as the final three. Of course, armchair fans have the advantage of using Google and Twitter, which the detective panel do not. So have they come close with their guesses?

“Let’s wait and see! There’s been quite a lot of wrong names bandied about, more so than this time last year,” says Nettleton. “Believe me, there will be some surprised faces on Saturday night!”

The Masked Singer: The Final is on ITV tonight at 7pm