FAMOUS MELLIPOP LOOK-ALIKES

Ok, so the day after I started at the publishing house, I'm sitting at my desk, beavering away in a concerted attempt to maintain the illusion that I am both a conscientious and worthwhile employee, when one of the old sales blokes pops his head into the office and asks me if I'm Jewish. Somewhat taken aback, I quizzically replied in the negative and he ducked back out into the hall and disappeared back into anonymous officedom before I could even ask why on earth he would think to ask me that. And wondering whether he might not just be one of the Perth Neo-Nazis recently outed in the press over here. After briefly pondering the possibility that he may well have been back at his desk, crossing me off his hit-list of suspected Jewish targets in the office, I went back to whatever boring crap I was doing and thought no more of the matter. Until today, when part two of the "Jewish question" conversation took place.

So old Dave pulled me up in the hallway today and thought it necessary to clarify why he thought I was Jewish in the first place. And no sooner had he explained why, was I haunted by ghosts of my teenage past. You see, he thought I looked like Barbra Streisand in profile. And to those lucky sods who knew me during those heady teenage years, all would agree that I copped the Streisand jokes quite a bit at school. I believe that is even immortalised as a joke in my entry in the high school yearbook. So I made it my personal goal to verbally and psychologically castrate every guy at school who ever tried it on with me. And the girls who took the piss didn't matter anyway. It was far too easy to revenge taunt a teenage girl into an eating disorder for me to even really bother.

Anyway, it also got me thinking as to the other famous people look-alikes I get lumbered with. You see, they all boil down to two essential similarities - they are blonde, and have big noses. I am blonde and I have a big nose (damn Italian genes). So besides the Streisand thing, I also get:

1) Johanna Griggs - Get this one far too often to recount. However, my favourite was the time I was at the free Savage Garden outdoor concert during the Sydney Olympics. A group of drunken blokes insisting that I was DEFINITELY Johanna Griggs, hell bent on maintaining my anonymity in the midst of a massive crowd and using the name Mellipop as a pseudonym for the evening.

2) Steffie Graf - The hilarious thing is, Anton looks EXACTLY like Andre Agassi - short, stocky, athletic build, bald, swarthy, big eyebrows. The two of us actually got hounded out of a Sydney pub a few years ago during the Australian Open, when Agassi was playing Pat Rafter - and kicking his Aussie ass. Every time Agassi won a point, we'd get yelled at by the whole freakin' pub....It started off as a fairly light-hearted exchange, but became increasingly more aggressive as the game kept going Agassi/Anton's way.

3) The Blonde Chick from Secret Life of Us (otherwise known as Sybilla Budd, to those in the know)- This is my favourite comparison. At least the chick is cute. I used to get this in pubs as a pick-up line a lot when I was single.

Crap. I so have to do this damn organics thing.....