Howie Mandel of 'Howie Do It'

If you're not sure what a cockamamie wig is, or how a famous person disguises himself, then watch NBC's Howie Do It Fridays.

The host of Deal or No Deal, known for his clean-shaven head, soul patch, double earrings and slim-line black suits, disguises himself on this prank show. Mandel dons a wig that looks as if a drunken woman slapped it on her head in a house lacking mirrors sometime in 1973.

"That wig is about 6 or 7 years old," he says. "I use it in every hidden-camera prank I do. It has a life of its own, no styling is involved."

No one would argue.

What's strange, however, is how someone as famous as Mandel can go unnoticed. This is a lesson for anyone trying to camouflage himself.

"The thought behind my disguise is simple," he says. "The whole thought behind the show is: All of us don't act on our first instinct. If somebody kinda looks like Howie Mandel, kinda sounds like Howie Mandel, it's not Howie Mandel. If it were Howie Mandel, would he put on a disguise?"

So Mandel pops up where people don't expect him, but he still needs to be attired, and Lisa Williams, the show's costumer, comes to his aid.

"What we are doing is we are taking ordinary people and putting them in extraordinary situations," Williams says of the unwitting participants upon whom pranks are played. "No. 1, they wouldn't think they are playing out a scenario with Howie Mandel, so it's not as difficult as you think in some ways. Just the idea of Howie in a lab coat and really severe or academic-looking glasses (works as a disguise). In most of his disguises he wears a wig. And that wig deserves a story of its own! Every time he puts it on, it has a different shape."

Lab coats come from uniform supply stores, and she buys accessories all over Toronto, including hats at Over the Rainbow and funky glasses at Optical Outlook, both in Yorkville, Ont.

Looking for vintage clothes, Williams sticks to a bunch of boutiques in Toronto's Kensington Market, including Exile.

When she's looking for mundane footwear, rather than the funkier shoes Toronto native Mandel favors in real life, Williams shops at The Bay, an old-time, popular Canadian department store.

Williams may have found the secret to camouflage.

"I think it really comes down to changing the key elements to your look," she says. "With Howie, add the hair back to the mix. Cover the eyes. We had him grow a mustache. He didn't shave it off; he added to it. ... The most important part is it's so different from what defines him in his real life. He really takes on a different aura."

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