Mistaken Identity

Can I just say, please? This is not me.

There are several vital differences. He’s good looking. I’m not. I wear glasses. He doesn’t.

Most importantly, he can sing. I can’t. When church audio-visual teams fit me up with a radio microphone, my first question is whether they will fade me down during the hymns.

I write this, because I am starting to get Twitter followers who think I am this singer. They will be disappointed.
It’s not the first case of mistaken identity I’ve had. In my late teens, when I wore NHS glasses, I was once mistaken outside HMV’s Oxford Street store for Elvis Costello. In my mid-twenties, I visited an evangelical church, only for some of the  young adults there to think I was Clive Calver, then the general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance.

Like anyone, I have namesakes, and that seems to be the issue here. Believe those people are me, and I’ve had an interesting life. I was a member of Great Britain’s gold medal winning Olympic hockey team in 1984 and am now performance director for England Hockey. I was the lead singer of Aussie rock band the Hoodoo Gurus. I have been in politics, having led Newcastle City Council and head of highways for Flintshire County Council. I am a criminologist, which is ironic, given that I was also an American police officer, murdered in 1981. (Yes, I know that last one is ‘Daniel Faulkner’, but he seems to come high in Google if you search for my name. I’ve no idea why.)

Have you ever been mistaken for someone else? Are there any interesting stories out there?