If you look like someone famous, why not have fun?

Yesterday I was musing on the handicap of being famous and being recognised wherever you go - or the even worse handicap of being the spitting image of someone famous and being mistaken for them wherever you go - and the various ways of dealing with this.

One I didn't mention was that claimed by the oddball American comedian, Emo Philips. He says that he was once appearing in court in Texas on a speeding charge and the judge suddenly stopped his statement and said, looking straight at him: "Haven't I seen you on television?" "I don't know," Emo said. "You see, when I'm on TV, I can't see out at you."

If you look like someone famous then you can at least make money these days from being a look-a-like, though it must be galling if you are doing well as a look-a-like and your famous famous equivalent suddenly changes their appearance. Or becomes unpopular, or is voted out of office. Or, heaven help us, dies. There must have been plenty of Princess Diana look-a-likes who mourned ever harder than everyone else on the day of the Paris underpass.

But let us not be morbid. Let us instead have a story which I have told before, though sparingly, I hope. It is the story of Malcolm Hardee, a comedian and impresario whom I met at the Edinburgh Festival some years ago - the very year, in fact, in which Mikhail Gorbachev suddenly shot to power and fame. Malcolm Hardee knew of a Gorbachev look-a-like back in London. He whizzed him up to Edinburgh and put him on as a fringe act, mostly singing rock'n' roll in a Russian accent.

"Why would Gorbachev be singing rock'n'roll ?" I asked Malcolm. "Ah," said Malcolm. "Well, this bloke may look a lot like Gorbachev now, but there was a time, when he was younger and hairier, when he was the spitting image of Elvis Presley. He even had a Presley look-a-like act. Then he started putting on weight and losing hair and bingo! He now looks like Gorby. Unfortunately, he never really got together a Gorby script, so he has to stick to the rock'n'roll act. Still, it's amazing to think that if Elvis had lived, he might have turned into Gorbachev..."

It's also amazing to think that some famous people take care not to look like themselves. I saw some old footage of pre-war comedy stars on TV the other day and was struck by the fact that although Laurel and Hardy off-stage looked just like Laurel and Hardy on-stage, Charlie Chaplin looked nothing like himself. On screen he had black hair, a moustache and all the kit - bowler hat, umbrella, raggedy clothes, etc. When he appeared in public - as in his triumphal return to the UK in the mid-1930s - what you saw was a silver-haired, clean-shaven, slightly vulpine and plumpish/prosperous man. The crowds knew him as a small, thin, dark-haired moustachioed figure, yet they gave a great reception to what, for all they knew, might have been a total impostor.

(I think I am right in saying that Chaplin was clean-shaven in those public shots. Groucho Marx, of course, didn't have a moustache at any time. I think I am also right in saying that it was always put on with grease paint.)

But what happens if you are completely unknown and are still mistaken for someone? This happened to the French humourist Alphonse Allais, and he dealt with the situation admirably. He says he was going home on the train one night to the suburbs of Paris, and was approached by a chatty woman who, though a complete stranger to him, obviously knew his double, because she greeted him familiarly and started to ask him how his family was.

- Your wife? she said. How is she?"

(You note I have adopted French punctuation for French conversation.)

- Alas, said Allais gravely. She is still shaky after the operation but is getting about well on her one remaining leg.

- Her one remaining...?

- Yes. They had to amputate her leg to free her from the train.

- The...? Oh, my god. How is your son taking this?

- We have not told him yet. We will wait until he is out of prison.

- Out of prison...?

And Allais painted an increasingly black picture of the home life of the unknown man, full of death, shame and tragedy.

One would like to have been there when the woman finally met the real person.