Recently Social media took to mocking former Bafana Bafana stalwart Mark Fish after he shared a picture he thought was him with Hugh Masekela, and was instead Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse. Much hilarity ensued as the entire country briefly forgot the fact that Zuma is still president (and that the amazing Hugh Masekela had died) and shared pictures of random people who looked loosely like, or shared a characteristic with, another celebrity. #MarkFishChallenge
I was at University when I was first accused of being Hollywood actor William H Macy. Mr Macy had recently been absolutely killing it in the movies with roles in Fargo, and something in which he played a fake superhero The Shoveller, so his face was pretty well known and inevitably some wit at my student job declared me to be his doppelgänger. I was flabbergasted. Mr Macy is a great actor, but he is also about as attractive as Donald Trump bending down to take his pants off. I, a debonair sophisticate, beloved by men and women alike, couldn’t possibly share a passing resemblance with this man, who in another age may have earned his coppers being paraded from town to town in a cage for the peasants to gawp at.
Since then others have remarked at our similarity, terrifyingly more often as I get older – and probably look more like Frank, his character in Shameless. It’s something I would like to pretend I am used to, and so when Mark Fish made his monumental Twitter cock up, I posted a picture of myself claiming a likeness to a man I hadn’t previously noticed was in fact a Hollywood heartthrob. That tweet was largely ignored – and I had specifically chosen a photo in which I thought I looked particularly Macyesque (E-Macy-ated?). Perhaps I don’t look that much like him after all?
The thought was just as sad as discovering I had looked like him in the first place. I realised with a sinking feeling that my retirement plan had been to claim to be him to gain entrance to funerals, and weddings, before shovelling free buffet in my sack.
Anyway I guess what I am saying is that Hugh Masekela is dead, and before now nobody knew that I was the main victim of that.