The born stupid identitI

I've no idea how Jason Bourne could possibly have managed to acquire all those passports and him full of bullet holes and having amnesia and all.I'd an awful job getting just one. I mean, I've always known I'd make a rotten spy, too seasick, too loud, too cowardly on a motorbike, can't ski and don't own adventurous clothing of any sort. But I thought I might be able to get an acceptable photograph taken and maybe go on holiday as, you know, myself and all. But no.


I repaired to the local chemist, acquired about their passport photograph facility and was beckoned into a ramshackle ante room by a dour teenager, brandishing a 1970's instamatic camera. She could hardly lift the thing, leave alone operate it and that was before she got started on The Regulations. She mournfully inspected my face and shook her head-I assumed the lack of make up and hangover were bothering her, but she wearily diagnosed 'too much hair'. Any more than 70%, she claimed darkly, and the UK Border boys would send the form and photo back.

I bet this sort of thing wouldn't happen to Jerry Hall. She doesn't even have to put up that blond swathe for Strictly but I, of course, was subjected to prolonged attempts at smoothing back. At one point I thought we might raid the shelves for emergency Frizz Ease but she settled for rolling lumps of hair up in a pencil. Test shots revealed forbidden hair-touching-eyebrow activity so we went for peculiar middle-parted locks with cow's lick, most reminiscent of that image of Hugh Grant, on the occasion of his arrest after the Divine Brown escapade. My facial expression at this point was no less hunted.

As for getting one's upstanding professional friends to vouch for your likeness-I would have had more luck getting the back of the photos signed by p.1s who'd been reared by wolves. For which read; teachers at the edge of reason i.e drunk on a Friday night towards the end of term. I had cheerfully paid for the grandiosely named 'Check and Test Service' at my local Post Office but I reckon the woman dealing with what became my 'case' would have refunded me if she could;the craic alone was well worth her while. She would take a quick look, snigger and get out more new forms. I went back to her so many times, I would just bellow 'Put the kettle on, it's me!',as I walked in the door.

By the time I got the 4th set of photos done, my expression was positively murderous;I was beginning to doubt I'd be let in anywhere abroad, I was making Myra Hindley look approachable and trustworthy. My mate in the Post Office managed to maintain her bureaucratic nonchalance, produced the official stamp without a flourish, and two weeks later,the passport arrived. It was like that scene in The Shawshank Redemption when Tim Robbins emerges from the river of sewage. The photo is so underexposed, I appear as indeed, a swamp person. No need to work on my disguises, then.