A madman, to be sure, would keep his coat on, would walk to the punch bowl still wearing his gloves, would shake hands and hug and peck cheeks as if they were connected to fully clothed bodies. But, a sane man would have but two choices-leave the party with a polite bow or remove your clothing with polite unbuttoning. And Allister, never being one to miss a party, preferred the latter. This held true for an audience listening to Allister. If they were all splendid in their nudity, well Allister too, would feel the need to drop pants and unbutton shirt at the podium before delivering a line. Of course, the idea was only to pretend that the audience was naked. But, there was little difference for someone with so potent an imagination as Allister's.
No, this would not work for Allister. Instead, he came by another method. He simply imagined the audience as a gathering of headless people. In this way, he could say what he truly wished to say, feel what he wished to feel, dance as he wished to dance (if he indeed wished to dance) and no one would know. They could not know. Not without their heads. Of course, they were not dead. They were kept alive by invisible intravenous feed from Allister's brain. For, to perform in front of dead people was more than macabre. It was also morbid, cadaverous, eerie, ghastly, ghostly, ghoulish, grim, grisly, gruesome, hideous, horrible, horrid, lurid, offensive, unearthly, and weird. So, these headless people were most certainly imagined alive. In fact, some still wore their bowlers and derbies atop their collars as if they did have heads. But, they did not. These, of course, would give Allister a giggle. As did the scarves and ascots.
And this was how Allister felt free upon stage. Free to deliver poignant speech or to perform poignant guardly task.