Has anyone seen anyone who looks like Gordon? TOM SHIELDS ON

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jan 20, 2008 | by TOM SHIELDS

YOU might think one Gordon Brown is enough. Artist Alison Jackson, who has achieved success and some notoriety through her photographs and videos using lookalikes of the famous, is assiduously seeking another version of the prime minister.

She has been searching for a Gordon for six years. Her latest effort was in Glasgow, last week, where she invited candidates to auditions at the Malmaison hotel. The media were in attendance.

Esquire magazine, sponsors of the event, were being tailed by the BBC, with Elaine C Smith in her role as reporter for the One Show. The Sunday Mail was pursuing the BBC. In a rare foray out of the office, your reporter was bringing up the rear of various other news organisations.

What there was not, was anyone who remotely resembled Gordon Brown. Ms Jackson, who was obviously getting desperate, asked if I could shave off my beard in case I looked a bit like Gordon.

(Actually, I'm saving myself for the Michael Caine stand-in part. Once the great man puts on a few stone. ) She had hoped that Gordy wannabes would be queued up for blocks around the Malmaison. A few hours into the auditions, only one bloke had turned up and this was only out of curiosity. He bore no resemblance to Gordon and left after developing a nosebleed, which is what you get for being nosey.

In my experience, the only person who looks anything like Gordon Brown is his brother John. Even then, it's a family resemblance. Close but no cigar.

John is deficient in the jowl department and smiles far too much. I don't think John would be up for being Ms Jackson's stand-in for his brother.

Her oeuvres are, shall we say, clever and a bit edgy and naughty. Some elements of the yellow press have described her work as scandalous.

That would have been the photo of what appears to be HM the Queen sitting on the throne reading a magazine. That's throne as in Shanks of Barrhead. HM's knickers, which look as if they are supplied by royal appointment from Black's of Greenock, are at her feet.

As well as royals such as HM and Camilla, and Posh and Becks, Ms Jackson has done an excellent line in extracting the michael from politicians, notably Bush and Blair. Which is why she is anxious to add PM Gordon to her portfolio.

Her task has been made the more difficult because not a lot of people look like Gordon. Ms Jackson sees him as a throwback (my word, not hers) to a previous Jane Austenesque era. A dark and mysterious Mr Rochester with strange secrets in the attic, which seems to be a pretty fair starting point as a description of the PM.

With this Byronic vision of Gordon, it seems odd that Ms Jackson should have begun her Glasgow search in the Forge shopping mall in Parkhead. "But the men were too small. Apparently it's the rickets, " she said, obviously having had a crash course on the socio- economic and historico-medical profile of the east end of Glasgow.

A member of the Jackson entourage had a theory as to why a Brown lookeylikey cannot be found. Perhaps he is from another world. No, he is just from Planet Kirkcaldy. And even in the Lang Toun, it appears, despite a search by the local paper the Fife Free Press, there is no dead ringer for the most famous resident since Adam Smith. ( Jim Baxter does not count. He played for Raith Rovers but he was born in Hill of Beath. ) I suspect there is somewhere a spitting image of Oor Gordon. But this person is probably in hiding and in denial.

The message is: come out, come out wherever you are. Ms Jackson needs you to fabricate some scandalous and naughty prime ministerial photies and videos.

ITis an ill-divided world. I realised this as a young journalist about 35 years ago when I investigated the compensation paid out to the relatives of victims of one of Scotland's most horrific fires. Twenty-two workers died in a blaze in an upholstery factory in James Watt Street in Glasgow in 1968.

They perished when the building, filled with deadly combustible materials, burned uncontrollably. The workers could not get to safety because the windows were fitted with iron bars.

There was no access to fire escapes.

Eventually, there was a payout from the insurance company. The relatives of the dead workers received pitifully small amounts. The family of a boss who died in the fire received a sum about 10 times greater. This was because the employer had much higher earnings potential. The same appalling death, but a higher payout.

The inequity of the James Watt Street fire victims came to mind last week with details of a compensation settlement that illustrated that the world may be an even more ill-divided place these days.

Leslie Ash, an actress, received a GBP5 million out-of-court deal from the National Health Service because she contracted a strain of the superbug MRSA that left her partially paralysed.

The sum of GBP5m was calculated on Ms Ash's potential earnings. Ms Ash is best known for appearing in a comedy series called Men Behaving Badly.

I suppose GBP5m is a reasonable estimate for career earnings in a TV world where Jonathan Ross gets GBP6m a year from our BBC licence contributions.