WAS I separated at birth? A statement that might not be considered traditional cocktail party banter, to be sure but as an opener it certainly grabbed my attention.
A colleague had been plucking up the courage for weeks to ask whether it was possible that someone in my family had been adopted. A friend of hers, she said, looked so like me he was almost certainly my mysterious, hitherto unknown brother. ("But you
're a hundred times prettier," she added hastily, lest I be offended at being compared to a boy, though that's nothing new – I spent an entire summer in my early 20s thinking I had a cute, gamine crop à la Pat Benatar – only to realise, in retrospect, that I looked more like Liam Gallagher. Mono-brow and all.)
On seeing a photograph of the aforementioned secret twin, I'm not convinced my mother has concealed an illegitimate birth from the rest of us after all, though for a moment it gave me a frisson of excitement. Could there be a skeleton in the Walker cupboard? A whiff of decadence? A scent of scandal? (No, that's just the damp swimming towels the boys dumped behind their beds then forgot about for a fortnight.)
But it's not the first time comparisons have been drawn between myself and another. A friend of The Teenager once told her he thought I looked like one of the Desperate Housewives.
"Ooh, which one?" I asked hopefully.
"The bald one."
You carry them for nine months, you breastfeed them and lose your figure for them, and that's the thanks you get. Anyway, I like to think he made the comment before Lynette (Felicity Huffman) began her course of chemotherapy, but you can never be too sure with boys.
Of course, the appearance of doppelgangers has been documented throughout history. Percy Bysshe Shelley is said to have conversed with his spitting image on at least one occasion, and John Donne saw a dead ringer for his wife on the same night their daughter was stillborn (leading to claims that the sight of a doppelganger is a harbinger of doom). Even Abraham Lincoln – surely the most sober-minded and rational of men – claimed to have seen images of himself, but with two faces.
The phenomenon continues in the present day. A friend recalls travelling on the up-escalator in an airport only to spy her mirror image on the way down. Spooky. And you'd be amazed how many men I meet think they look like Brad Pitt. Surely I'm not the only one to get Tom Cruise and Christian Bale confused, and all of Girls Aloud look the same to me (except the ginger one, of course, who looks like the fourth rider of the Apocalypse).
The Suitor and I almost came to blows one night when he refused to accept that he bore a striking resemblance to Daniel Craig – around the eyes, honest! But face it, if I'd told him he looked more like the geeky one out of Two and a Half Men we may not have lasted even this long. (Darling, if you're reading this, you are not in the least bit geeky, and all man, I can assure you.)
The Teenager has her own ideas about who I look most like. Catching me in the middle of a delicate de-fuzzing operation (ever since The Suitor made that comment about my 'tache I've been more than a little paranoid), she creased up and could barely speak for several minutes. When she eventually came round, she blurted out: "Billy Ray Cyrus," before doubling up again.
Thing is, I've checked and she's right. Now all she has to do is make like Miley and we'll be on to a winner. Kerching!
