Usually when people send me pictures of dopplegangers I don't really see the resemblance. Even with Charley Boorman which I can understand up to an extent I think I am far more handsome. Ditto with Brad Pitt who has been trying to copy my distinctive look recently, but who can't pull it off due to being too much of a minger.
But today I did a bit of a double-take when I received a tweet from @lilyliciousx who was wondering if she'd surreptitiously snapped me in KFC in Portsmouth. I was pretty sure she hadn't as I haven't been to a KFC anywhere recently and can't remember when I was last in Portsmouth and I was in my house at the time. But even I had to think twice about it when I saw
the photo. It was ME. Me with slightly shorter hair than usual and me having made the odd decision to highlight my fringe, but definitely me. The stance, the double chin. The only thing that made me suspect it wasn't me was that I don't have a stripy Frenchman shirt. But my face. He had my face! (weirdly earlier this week I had tweeted a link to
one my favourite Lee and Herring sketches. Had my other Hector Spankfield come to life? Or had Me2 finally made a physical break from me and had dashed off to Portsmouth to look for the whores and fried chicken that Me1 no longer let's him have?
Was this the man who had been swearing in curry houses in East London and eating in a restaurant in Taunton? Or was I just having an affair with a chicken loving Portsmouth woman and was trying to make my wife think there was nothing going on by openly talking about this picture? Or is it possible to have a ghost of your younger self without actually being dead?
It was me. As far as I could see, the man is me. He could make a good living as a Richard Herring lookalike. Well not a good living. Or indeed a living. But he could impress about one in a thousand people as he walked down the street and very occasionally get a free drink (as I did in a bar in Brighton before my gig yesterday - though I can't remember the last time that happened).
It's very unsettling to think there is another man with my face and my posture out there. And if I ever start behaving oddly (which might mean if I behave normally) or get in trouble for any crime or whatever then it will be a Prince and a Pauper situation and we will have swapped lives. Or he will have me imprisoned somewhere in an iron mask.
He looks a bit younger than me to be fair, so there is a chance that the person who tweeted that went back in time, or that the younger me travelled forward in time. Though if that's the case it's odd that he had decided to see what changes has happened in KFC in the last decade. I wonder if he's going to hunt me down to try and kill me and close our loop or just to chastise me for making the wrong choices in my life. It would make a good 10th anniversary blog if he turned up to discuss with me how he thought my life would be right now and how far I have diverged from his hopes and dreams.
My face, he's got MY face. It's the kind of rubbish idea that only Patrick Macgoohan would think was clever.
If you are him/me then please get in touch to reassure me and to let me know what it's like living your life with people occasionally mistaking you for me and more often mistaking you for Charley Boorman (though to be honest I know what that bit is like).
