Me Everywhere

I work with someone who looks a bit like me, albeit older and perhaps - loathe as I am to admit it - a little better looking.

I console myself with the fact that he has only written around fourteen novels - and some of them haven't even won any awards.

Once, in a department meeting, I turned to the person next to me and asked whether he thought that the person in question looked like me. He confirmed my assessment. If we were actors, he could be cast as my uncle or older cousin; at a stretch, we could even be brothers. (He looks more like me than my actual brothers do, anyway.)

Once, in the late 1990s, I was stopped in a supermarket in Hillsdale NSW and asked whether I was Frank Woodley, the Australian comedian.

Stupidly, I denied it. With precise Freudian logic, further denials simply confirmed her suspicion. Encouraged by my evident humility, she congratulated me on my show with Colin Lane and said that, of the two of us, I was "much funnier." Eventually I demurred and thanked her - even if she did look a bit disappointed that I wasn't funnier in person.

I do, in fact, look a bit like Frank Woodley - although I tend to think that Woodley actually looks more like a cross between me and a friend of mine, Lucas Ihlein.

If one were to line the three of us up, with Woodley in the middle and Lucas and I on either side, then the effect would be something like a physiognomic colour-wheel, with a gradual morphing of the face. I'm sure - given the inclination and adequate resources - we could locate other points on the wheel. But it's not a bad start.

Please allow me to continue this narcissistic meditation...

Another Flemo lookalike is surely Colin Vearncombe, the lead-singer of the English band Black, who had a big hit in 1986 with the song "Wonderful Life."

In fact, I tend to think Vearncombe looks like a cross between me and the English singer/"pop sensation" Rick Astley. (Unfortunately, I think he is well-known enough for me to not put his picture here. Moreover, I don't want any pictures of Rick Astley on my blog - and if you know what's true, beautiful, and just, you won't either.)

When faced (literally) with these kinds of bodily similarities I have been tempted to wonder if the person in question and I are somehow related - or rather, given the "mitochondrial eve" hypothesis, just how related the person is. "Woodley," for instance, is an Anglo-Saxon name and my surname is Anglo-French, but perhaps the stronger genetic link here is on my mother's side. (Further proof of the Woodley connection: Like Woodley, I am also extraordinarily funny.)

I'm not sure why, but I find it frustrating the extent to which I can't really investigate these connections with any precision. I've long had a fantasy that I could make small lit signs appear above people's heads which would announce their familial link with me. The labelling could be switched from the technical "Fifth cousin twice removed on your mother's side"-type of a classification, to the simpler "Peter Smythe: Person most closely related to you within a five kilometre radius." The people themselves wouldn't be aware of the information - but I would.

These are not the only connections I've entertained. A few years ago my sister was seeing an elderly patient who began to cry shortly after the start of the consult. She asked why the woman was crying and the woman replied: "You remind me of my Ray." Without pause, and not knowing quite why, my sister shot back "Ray Crisford?" "Yes! My Ray! How did you know him?" My sister didn't - they'd never met. Ray was our uncle and his plane was shot down over Germany in 1945. He apparently survived the crash but later starved to death in a forest. The elderly woman in question was "with" Ray prior to him heading off to war. The woman married but she apparently never quite got over the loss. I know this story sounds apocryphal, but my sister has stayed in contact with the woman in question ever since, sharing pictures and getting stories. I'm not sure what the woman's husband thinks of it all, however. (Chances are that he has probably also been convinced by now that he should have married Ray as well.)

That was a connection - admittedly not genealogical - that might never have been discovered. It would be odd to suddenly be able to actually see all these threads wherever they might be. Imagine you are sitting next to an elderly gentleman on a bus. Perhaps he looks like this:

After ten minutes he leans over to you and says: "You know, young man, I had an affair with your grandmother. 1957. Paul Anka and a fine bottle of Petit Verdot. It was a magic year. You know, the way she used to..."

"I'm sorry - this is my stop."

Perhaps it's not such a good idea after all. I don't know why I made such a big deal out of it.