These days I have a rule of thumb (where does that expression come from?!) - "never tell anybody they look like someone famous". Because even if you think it's a flattering comparison, you'll be on dangerous ground. Everybody has an idea of their own self-image, and you telling them they look like "that bloke from 'The Bill'" may well throw it all confusingly out of kilter. Even if it's one of the better-looking blokes from 'The Bill'.
My rule of thumb was compounded about ten years ago when I was on holiday in Sardinia. There weren't many other people around, so we ended up getting 'stuck' with two other couples for the duration of our week there (and they with us, obviously!) One of the blokes was a dead ringer for Dale Winton - he really was - in fact, at first I'd thought it really was him swearing at a waiter and swigging from a bottle of Sol. The subject came up while we were all out at a lovely farmhouse dinner (which my husband was later to throw back up again, all round our lovely villa at which there were no cleaning products...but that's another story entirely).
"I'm always getting mistaken for Dale Winton!" this bloke said good-naturedly, and we all had a laugh about how much he really did look like him. Then his partner simpered from the other side of the table "I'm always being told I look like someone famous as well! Can you guess who it is?"
I looked at her for a moment, and then without thinking I said "Is it Miss Jones from 'Rising Damp'?"
In the milli-second after I'd said that, it felt like someone had come in wearing a cloak, duly breathing a sparkling blanket of ice straight into the atmosphere round our table.
"No" Miss Jones (not her real name) said, firmly. "It's Jamie Lee Curtis, actually"
I didn't apologise, mainly because I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I'd just basically insulted her without thinking. But I also didn't apologise because if you ask the question "Who do you think I look like?" you have to be prepared to hear whatever the person you're asking actually thinks, not whatever you're wanting to hear. It's like the perennial "how old do you think I am?" I got caught with that one at a friend's party last year, with one of her friends who worked at her childrens' school.
"People can never believe how old I am when I tell them!" she said, and I grimaced involuntarily as I knew what would be coming next...
"Go on, have a guess!"
I tried the old "Oh, I couldn't do that", but that never works; you're always roped in eventually. So I looked at her, and then for insurance I knocked a few years off the age I'd guessed she was: about thirty-six. "Errr...you're about thirty-two?" I said uncertainly. The response I was awarded was her stomping off to the other side of the room without speaking to me again, and I later found out from my friend that she was only twenty-four. Again, I didn't apologise...in fact her stomping off had conveniently saved me from listening to any more of her conversation on the history of why she always takes a sweetener in her tea instead of sugar.
I also knew a friend-of-a-friend who, whenever we all met up, always mentioned his perceived resemblance to a 'Hollyoaks' character...something nobody else ever commented upon. He asked me directly once if I thought he looked like the said character, and though my response was disappointing, at least that time it wasn't insulting. It was, simply, "I don't know - I don't watch 'Hollyoaks'". We didn't have much to talk about after that.
I think most people have, at some point, been told they resemble someone famous. It's a bit like when a new baby's born and the family insist that he or she's "exactly like Grandad/Auntie Jean/Cousin Eric was at that age". People like to make comparisons; it's just that some people come off worse than others. Like the woman I worked with for a little while who came into the office on a Monday morning, outraged that someone at a party had told her she "looks like Ian Hislop from 'Have I Got News For You'". I joined her in her outrage, but as I went off to make her a consolation cuppa I slowly realised that that person had been amazingly perceptive, because she actually did look like Ian Hislop from 'Have I Got News For You'. But this time, you'll be pleased to hear I kept that information to myself. As she should have done herself, because as she retold the insulting story to everyone in our office I could see the resemblance slowly dawning on them as well. It was all some of them could do not to leave a copy of 'Private Eye' on her chair after that.
I myself haven't got off so lightly in the old "celebrity doppelganger" conundrum. I've been thrown some flattering comparisons in the past, such as Cameron Diaz, Kate Bosworth, Geena Davis and Jane Leeves (Daphne from 'Frasier') - see, I haven't quite resisted the temptation to mention the good ones, have I?! But before you start thinking how cocky I am, I've also been told I resemble the Honey Monster (due to having had a bob cut in pretty much exactly the same unfortunate style) and "that bird from Countdown's Dictionary Corner". I never found out who exactly, but on the few occasions I've ever watched Countdown I didn't see anybody I'd have liked to remotely resemble plonked in the Dictionary Corner. I also uploaded a picture of myself onto one of those 'celebrity comparison' websites for a laugh, which I duly got when one of my matches came back as Kate Moss's druggie ex, Pete Doherty.
Next time I go out I might ask people who they think I look like, and then mention him. Well...it'll be a conversation starter, at any rate. Unless they ask me who I think they look like in return. In which case...it may well be the start of a long night.
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