Can you tell I’m trying to smile behind my mask?

Will Gore wonders if being anonymous is better than being unremarkable

The habitual wearing of a mask these days makes recognition even harder (Getty)

Considerable evidence suggests I don’t have a very memorable face. For one thing, if I wear a hat, people I know reasonably well tend to walk past me in the street without a second glance. For another, over the course of my life, I have been told I look like such a wide range of other people (who themselves don’t look alike), that I can only conclude the primary characteristic of my features is their ubiquity.

Some of the comparisons have an unnerving ring of truth: Lee Evans is a regular one, made not only by acquaintances but strangers in the street. Michael Crawford in Frank Spencer mode is another, which links naturally to Evans, I suppose. Less convincingly, a woman outside a nightclub in Aberdeen once told me I looked like Will Young.