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This picture has reignited the Diary column's passion for look-alikes.

LAST year you may remember a Private Eye style Diary piece by esteemed former columnist Jon Massey highlighting the almost eerie facial similarities of local Parliamentarian David Gauke and not very funny comic Jimmy Carr.

You may also remember Mr Carr's agent's po-faced rebuttal of our request to print his picture.

Look-alikes, then, have been in short supply since.

Thanks, however, to the eagle eyes of admired and respected features writer Francine Wolfisz we are now able to bring you another.

Yes, it seems my father has some explaining to do (again) as I appear to have a younger brother treading the boards at Windsor's Royal Theatre this month.

The dashing, handsome (wheeze, wheeze) young star of Henry James' Turn of the Screw is, I am sure you will agree, somewhat of a Doppelgänger for yours truly - the lucky boy.

If you know his name feel free to let me know.

What's left of the Skinner family silver, however, he can keep his grubby little mitts off.

AS the old saying goes, things that are too good to be true usually are.

Fortunately, however, this depressingly pessimistic maxim (presumably first uttered in a factory producing nothing but half empty glasses) does not apply to the following, absolute crackerjack of a story from our sister paper the Welwyn and Hatfield Review.

In brief: man pays £200 cash for what he believes to be a laptop computer off a bloke in a Hatfield car park.

Shock horror, however, when he opens the box soon after he finds a few pounds' worth of potatoes.

The unfortunate victim, we are told, did not take part in the following, entirely fictional exchange.

Chief Inspector Judas: "And what, Sir, did this man look like?"

Mr Graham Ullible: "Big fella, black and white striped jumper, heavy stubble and black face mask."

CI: "Did this man happen to carry a crowbar and a large brown swag bag?

GU: "Yeah, I think that's him."

CI: "Any melodramatic tip-toeing to speak of as he made good his escape, Sir?"

GU: Crikey, it wasn't you was it?

CI: "Looks like you've been had by Burglar Bill, Sir. He's got a nerve.

WELL written news stories, as my old teacher would frequently remind me, should paint pictures in the minds of readers.

As far as I know the rules for sports reporting are very much the same. Imagine my amusement, then, after stumbling across this report in the South Wales Evening Post detailing local rugby side Ospreys' ten points to 19 capitulation to Watford-based Saracens.

I shall not bore you with the full 500 or so words - I think the intro says all we need to know "Not even Dawn French jumping out of a plane without a parachute would have crashed to earth with more of a bump than the Ospreys on Sunday," lamented its frustrated reporter.

Imagine, if you will, the powerful image of the rotund, loveable comic (dressed in full skydiving gear) careering head-long into the Vicarage Road turf from 15,000 feet.

Unforgettable, I am sure you will agree.

10:54am Friday 18th April 2008

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