Name: Michael Myers.

Age: 60.

Appearance: A groovy, shagadelic superspy from the 1960s, baby!

Can I be the first to point out your mistake? There is no mistake. By the way, do I make you horny, baby?

What? Euch! No! I’m switched on, baby. I’m smashing.

You’ve made a fundamental error. Michael Myers is the mask-wearing villain from the Halloween films. You’re doing an impression of Austin Powers, a character played by the actor Mike Myers. But he is this Halloween’s hottest look.

Austin Powers? Yes.

Is everyone as stupid as you? Listen, have you seen the Edgar Wright film Baby Driver?

No. Then you won’t get the joke. In Baby Driver, a robber is tasked with buying his crew some Michael Myers masks for a heist. He comes back with some Austin Powers masks instead. “But this is Mike Myers,” he protests.

Ah, when clearly the request was for some Halloween masks. But they are Halloween masks! You see, there’s a double meaning here that confuses the film Halloween (which would have necessitated a mask based on the film’s antagonist) with the holiday Halloween (in which people dress up in various masks). It’s a very clever play on words, really.

I think you might have overexplained this. Well, yes. It’s funnier in the film, admittedly.

So that’s why everyone is dressing up as Austin Powers? Yes. It’s because they get to reference a popular film from this summer that they enjoyed, and not because everyone has suddenly lost the ability to differentiate between a fictional quasi-supernatural serial killer and a 20-year-old comic character with funny teeth that really hasn’t aged very well.

Edgar Wright must be thrilled. Not only that, but he apparently saw the whole thing coming. When the joke played well in the Baby Driver trailer, he got in touch with Austin Powers’s studio to forewarn them. “I even mentioned … that they may ship a lot of masks at Halloween, and I think that’s exactly what’s happened,” he said.

I need to buy myself an Austin Powers mask! Too late. The masks are so popular that they have become impossible to find. You can, however, purchase a cardboard mask of Austin Powers’s side-character Fat Bastard on Amazon for £2.49, if that helps.

Do say: “Let’s all buy Halloween masks for Halloween.”

Don’t say: “No, not Halloween Halloween masks, Halloween masks.”