An emotional interview with Claudia Winkleman, whose child was seriously burnt when her Halloween costume ignited last year, has gone viral.
The television presenter’s then eight-year-old daughter Matilda received third degree burns over much of her body after her witch’s costume caught fire from a candle in a pumpkin last year.
In the video, viewed more than five million times, Winkleman warns parents about the dangers of costumes ahead of Halloween in a week’s time.
“I don’t want another eight-year-old to go through what Tilda went through. I don’t want this to happen. I just think next Halloween, even if I stop a few people going, oh let’s not put them in that next to a naked flame. That would be amazing.”
Winkleman, who presents Strictly Come Dancing, described her daughter “screaming, all the kids were screaming.”
“I had never seen anything like it,” she said. “We couldn’t put her out. Her tights had melted into her skin. … She went up, is the only way I know how to describe it.”
“Her surgeon described it as an attack… because of the intensity of it [the flames].”
Britons spend roughly £150million every year on Halloween costumes, but investigations have revealed many children’s costumes are dangerously flammable.
A leading burns expert said the current safety standards for children's costumes should be revised. “They [fires] are relatively rare but when they do occur they are very devastating,” Ken Dunn told the BBC.
