What happened to the lookalikes of the many world leaders who died or were deposed over the past 12 months – from Kim Jong-il to Muammar Gaddafi?
Comments (22)
Patrick Kingsley
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 15 January 2012 20.59 GMT
Article history
Kim Young-sik moonlighted as a Kim Jong-il lookalike for years. Photograph: Prakash Singh/AFP
When Kim Jong-il died, North Korean soldiers fell to their knees and cried. Children sobbed, reported the Chinese state news agency, and some women even fainted. But few were sadder than South Korean shopkeeper Kim Young-sik, who told reporters: "I feel very empty, as if a part of me died."
Then again, Kim is a special case. With his large paunch, jowly face and oversized glasses, Kim had for many years moonlighted as the world's foremost Kim Jong-il impersonator. His looks took him to the middle east, where he performed alongside the spit of Vladimir Putin in a chocolate advert; Japan, for a part in a TV series; and the film sets of South Korea, where he had roles in both features and music videos. "Sometimes," he confided in 2006, "I feel like I am Kim Jong-il."
But Kim now fears his second career might have reached an abrupt end. "People try to comfort me, saying some figures are more famous when they're dead," he laments. "But I don't think it will be the case with Kim."
Is he right? What happens to other impersonators once their lookalikes cop it? After all, in Sacha Baron Cohen's forthcoming film The Dictator, it's the lookalike who ends up leading the country after the dictator flees to America. So is this game over, or could it be the profile boost Kim secretly always hoped for?
Prospects are certainly bleak for Anthony Pena, who impersonated Muammar Gaddafi on Conan O'Brien's eponymous cable talkshow. "Good luck for the future," were O'Brien's last words to Pena as he left the show following Gaddafi's death in October. Seconds later, Pena was himself "dead" – killed off by the show's producers in a mock execution by a gun-toting crew member who had confused him for the real thing. Or so the script went.
But all is not lost, says Francesca MacDuff-Varley, who runs A-List Lookalikes, a British doubles agency. "Political lookalikes often get more work in historical reenactments after the politician's death," she argues. "When Osama bin Laden died, for example, there was more interest in Osama doubles."
In the entertainment industry, she also notes, superstars' lookalikes tend to get more work after their doppelganger's death. "If they're already an icon, death can make them bigger," says MacDuff-Varley, citing Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse as recent examples. "There's usually a lull of about six months, to allow for a grieving period. And then it all takes off again."
Kim could also take heart from 2011's Egyptian revolution, which seemed to spark a renaissance in Hosni Mubarak impersonations. Ayman Hosni achieved YouTube fame – and an appearance on Egyptian TV – with his series of videos mimicking the fallen dictator. In June, actor Medhat Aboul Ezz was cast as Mubarak in a film dramatising his last days in power, a role Aboul Ezz says he would not have dared take on before the revolution. Comedian and serial impersonator Mahmoud Azab announced a new show that will mimic members of Mubarak's family and administration– though not the dictator himself.
If all else fails, Kim could always write a book about his years as a dictator's double. It is a tactic perfected by Latif Yahia, former body double to Uday Hussein, son of Saddam. Yahia wrote two books: I Was Saddam's Son, and The Devil's Double – the last of which was turned into a 2011 film of the same name, starring Dominic Cooper. Never mind that Kim never technically worked for his lookalike – two reporters have questioned Yahia's claims. They say many of his accounts could not be verified.
Other dictators' doppelgangers have faced more believable dangers. In 2004, 47-year-old Leonel Arias was wearing an Bin Laden mask in his hometown in Costa Rica when a taxi driver leapt out of his car and shot him twice in the stomach. He thought Arias was a would-be carjacker.
Last October, an Egyptian called Mohamed Bishr was bundled into the back of a van by three porn directors who offered him more than £200,000 to take part in a Saddam-themed sex video. When he refused, Bishr was thrown from the moving vehicle, and ended up in hospital. Later, the film-makers threatened to kidnap him again if he didn't change his mind.
Australian comic Chas Licciardello was a more willing lookalike – but his antics scarcely ended better. In 2007, he donned a Bin Laden-style beard, hired a motorcade, and drove through police checkpoints to arrive at the Sydney hotel that was playing host to then-US president George Bush. Police weren't amused and arrested Licciardello, along with 10 other members of his entourage. "I don't see a funny side," police minister David Campbell later said. "I don't see a funny side at all."
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22 comments, displaying
spontaneityrox
15 January 2012 10:18PM
My guess is they were summarily killed to keep up with the official story.
TheDefinitive
15 January 2012 10:43PM
Has anyone ever seen David Cameron and David Mitchell in the same room together?
Henryplant
15 January 2012 10:58PM
In my twenties I was the missing Michael Rockerfeller's döppleganger. Considered a claim, but being born three years after his disappearance, I just couldn't quite square the alien abduction bit.
SnakePlissken
15 January 2012 11:10PM
David Miliband's lookalike is doing ok, he's leading the Labour Party..
hubbahubba
16 January 2012 12:34AM
I think they're all going to have strings threaded through their arms for Team America: Part 2.
Dappler
16 January 2012 2:19AM
It didn't quite pan out that way for Chas....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOEWd_M5m44
BrightRaven
16 January 2012 2:34AM
You left out Margaret Cho!
tufsoft
16 January 2012 2:41AM
In China there are guys who make a living out of looking like Mao, Zhou En Lai or Deng Xiao Ping. I myself regularly impersonate General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell.
tufsoft
16 January 2012 2:41AM
In China there are guys who make a living out of looking like Mao, Zhou En Lai or Deng Xiao Ping. I myself regularly impersonate General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell.
chockychocky
16 January 2012 4:17AM
There was Steve Nallon, Margaret Thatcher impersonator extraordinaire: he was just wonderful on Spitting Image. I wondered what happened to him after she resigned -
foreignworker
16 January 2012 5:42AM
Is it standard practice for reviewers in the Guardian to give away the end ing of the movie, without so much as a spoiler alert?
justamirage
16 January 2012 8:30AM
Mohd. Bisr kidnapped to do a sex-themed video on Saddam Hussien , but then freed after he refused, would otherwise have the Title : " Gang-banger by the doppleganger" .
JonathanCR
16 January 2012 9:43AM
Response to foreignworker, 16 January 2012 5:42AM
Is it standard practice for reviewers in the Guardian to give away the end ing of the movie, without so much as a spoiler alert?
Of course it is. Just as they're careful to stick a picture of the winner of The Apprentice on the front page the minute it's announced - because who ever uses BBC iPlayer?
geeforce5000
16 January 2012 10:01AM
I'm No-Scar..... dot com
completemonsterbob
16 January 2012 10:42AM
I don't really feel much sympathy for these doppelgangers, (except the Saddam looking bloke), they could try getting a life of their own maybe?
Halo572
16 January 2012 10:43AM
Remember Mike Yarwood, that bloke that did the Mrs Thatcher voice for Spitting Image or Faith Brown?
Guess whatever happened to them would be the template.
dodger65
16 January 2012 10:50AM
There's a guy works down the chip shop who swears he's Berlusconi
ehaines
16 January 2012 11:17AM
You know, I did see a couple of them the other day, Kim Jong-il included, down at the local Nando's tucking into a piri-piri chicken and chips.
baldlegend
16 January 2012 11:44AM
Surely the question should be: are those dictators who we have been told are dead actually dead or were the dopplegangers killed to give the real leaders the chance to escape and go into hiding in plain sight dressed as people who look like them?
Your conspiratorially.
SonOfTheDesert
16 January 2012 11:58AM
I read a book about a lookalike of former Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. He was a village dentist, having a perfectly normal life, when he was approached by representatives of Hoxha and told that he would now work as a double for the dictator. Not something he wanted to do, but as jobs go, it could have looked worse: after all, he'd be well paid, and well looked after.
What he wasn't told was that he'd be given plastic surgery to make him look just like Hoxha. And that everyone he knew, friends, family, clients, would all be herded on to a bus and murdered - so that no-one would know that Hoxha had a double at all.
And when Hoxha died, all manner of people attacked this poor man, believing him to be a ghost, sent to haunt and curse the country for ever more.
jackenolen
16 January 2012 12:31PM
Interesting article, but I'm not sure if those who choose to impersonate the famous as a sideline or job, are truly in the same category as people who are "chosen" or forced to impersonate world leaders or those whose lives are in threat of assassination. There's a big difference between being an Elvis impersonator for instance and a Body double for a Tyrant, the first is a choice that is made for pleasure and possible profit, the second can lead to death or the witness of acts of violence and barbarity or both. Although Kim Jong Sik bears the strong resemblance to Kim Jong Il he enjoyed his fame and did it of his free will, lived a normal life, never met the man that he impersonated and knew only as much about Kim Jong Il's life as the next person. Other body doubles like Latif Yahia had a close up and personal experience with the person that they were impersonating, in his case he suffered greatly at the hands of Uday Saddam Hussein and witnessed great atrocities. This article also makes reference to an article that appeared previously in The guardian where an Irish journalist by the name of Eoin Butler tried to cast doubt on Latif Yahia's story, he refutes these allegations in this article:
http://www.latifyahia.net/1/post/2012/01/dirty-tricks-and-media-manipulation.html
I mention this because I have spent a lot of time in Iraq and even the ordinary Iraqi on the streets of Baghdad knows of Latif Yahia and his story, unfortunately articles like Eoin Butler's and indeed Ed Caesar's of The Sunday Times rely on the testimonies of other Iraqis with dubious histories of their own. The two journalists that I have mentioned doubt Latif Yahia's story because they say that his claims cannot be verified, may I remind you that we cannot verify that God exists yet millions around the world believe, we cannot verify that anti-matter exists but we are one step closer to proving it after decades and that at one point we all believed the world was flat.
Aravah
16 January 2012 1:14PM
Response to TheDefinitive, 15 January 2012 10:43PM
No, but they don't look at all alike. David Mitchell has character in his face, David Cameron is completely bland.
PatrickKingsley
16 January 2012 5:02PM
Response to foreignworker, 16 January 2012 5:42AM
foreignworker
Is it standard practice for reviewers in the Guardian to give away the end ing of the movie, without so much as a spoiler alert?
Yes, it is actually written into the contract - a contract which, to be fair @foreignworker, I've UTTERLY FAILED to honour today. The editors are ripping it up as I type.
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