LONDON — Nobody, it seems, looks like British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. That’s a problem for artist Alison Jackson, whose so-far futile nationwide search for a look-alike brought her Monday to the streets of London.
Jackson needs a Brown stand-in for her photos and films, in which she pokes fun at celebrities in compromising positions. She’s been trying to find a Brown look-alike for more than six years without success.
She and her assistants have spent hours scrutinizing pedestrians on crowded streets in hopes of finding a match.
“It’s exasperating,” she said Monday after searching the streets in vain. “I’m not exactly sure why it’s so hard. I’m exhausted. I’ve run up and down the country, but nobody looks like him.”
Jackson is best known in Britain for her award-winning BBC comedy TV series, “Doubletake,” which poked fun at the famous by photographing look-alikes in situations the celebrities themselves would obviously have shunned. A video of a David Beckham look-alike talking on a cell phone while using the toilet was just one example.
Jackson has had no trouble finding convincing doubles for dozens of national and international figures, including Queen Elizabeth II, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Britney Spears.
But few people have even bothered to show up for recent auditions in Glasgow and other cities for Brown look-alikes. One recent audition drew only five applicants.
Some of the actors at an open casting call Monday bore a strong resemblance to Brown — especially when touched up by makeup professionals — but there was no one who seemed to capture Brown’s essence.
Artist Richard Wade came close, especially with the help of tape placed behind his ears to make them stand out a bit. Wade said portraying Brown was a challenge because the prime minister was “really wooden.”
Jackson thinks part of the problem is that Brown appears more like a brooding figure from an 19th-century novel such as “Wuthering Heights” than a modern politician. The other main problem, she says, is the prime minister’s “total lack of charisma and zest,” especially when compared to his telegenic predecessor, Tony Blair.
Political observers in Britain believe Brown may be hard to satirize because he has not yet fully developed his own personal fashion or oratory style since taking over from Blair seven months ago.
“I’m quite a fan of those television programs where they have Beckham and Camilla but they’ve never had Gordon,” said George Jones, a professor emeritus of government at the London School of Economics. “It’s intriguing. He doesn’t conform to any type. I’ve certainly never met anyone who looks like him. He hasn’t been done by anybody.”
Jones says Brown’s unusual appearance and speaking style may be a result of a serious childhood rugby injury that cost him the sight in one eye and nearly left him totally blinded.
“He has a peculiar habit when he speaks, his jaw seems to be dislocated at times, it seems to come out of the slot, and I think that may stem from the rugby accident,” Jones says.
Brown is also hard to imitate because he has none of the flair for presentation that distinguished the Blair years, Jones says.
“As soon as he starts to speak, people are turned off,” Jones says. “He’s boring, he lists things, and when you listen to Brown you realize what a super communicator Blair was.”
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