There is a myth that everyone has seven doppelgangers around the world. Seven other people, totally unrelated, who look just like you.
This belief gained publicity earlier this year when, for a bet, three Dublin university students set about trying to find their own lookalikes.
Niamh Geaney found her twin, Karen Branigan, only an hour from Dublin, by using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. A few months later she discovered another in Italy.
What started as an informal quest developed into the Twin Strangers project. It now has its own website dedicated to helping those who wish to find others that share the same physical attributes.
The concept got another lift only the other week when two complete strangers sat next to each other on a flight to Ireland and started laughing at their resemblance without benefit of Guinness.
Mind you, Robert Sterling and Neil Douglas both had impressive ginger beards and, as one of them said: “Anybody with a ginger beard looks like anybody else with a ginger beard.”
As a teenager, many years ago, I fancied I looked like Ricky Nelson. We even shared the same birthday and I sang his songs in a rock and roll band. Sadly, no-one else saw the resemblance or the talent and I became a journalist.
In my adopted home city of Manchester in the 1960s I was occasionally mistaken for George Best in night clubs (but never on a football field).
During a clean shaven period in middle age I was stopped by a young woman near Wigan Pier who said: “Are you Paul McCartney?” which was not only bizarre but distressing. I have always been a Lennon fan.
And one Sunday in Leeds, an inebriated chap who was possibly hoping to score the price of a pint, accosted me in Cloth Hall Street with the unforgettable line: “You, Kenny Rogers, sir?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I would remember being that close to Dolly Parton.”
Michael Sheehan, an assistant professor of neurobiology and behaviour at Cornell University, says: “There is only so much genetic diversity to go around. If you shuffle that deck of cards so many times at some point you get the same hand dealt to you twice.”
Especially with a world population at seven billion. With that number of people the gene pool has to throw up repeat formulas. So, I thought, who do I really look like? It was time to try the Twin Strangers site set up by the Dublin three. I registered, submitted two photographs, chose descriptions of eyes, face shape and lips, clicked go ... and got zilch.
Perhaps it is just too youth orientated for someone of my mature years but I didn’t get anyone who might vaguely resemble me. Undeterred, I tried a different website called I Look Like You, submitted two pictures and age and bingo!
They provided me with 10 people they suggested could be my doppelganger.
Five of them were women.
At least Matthieu from Quebec has a beard but what has poor Mary Jane from Brussels, Heidi from Pennsylvania, Fifyan from Michigan, Laura from Liverpool and Genevieve from Australia done to deserve this classification?
