sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Y'know how it is: a lot of people look like other people.

Like both my Mum and the bloke in my/our local curry house (she also lives in West Hampsteadish) think I'm the spitting image of Tracey-Anne Oberman. And when I was in NY, I saw (clearly the doppleganger) of a friend of my parents, standing outside a downtown building, smoking with coworkers. I mean, it wasn't her. But it could have been. But then she's too busy getting her hair done in Cheadle, even with the time-travel.

So I've seen pictures of Pete Doherty from the Libertines on and off for a couple of years, and he's looked vaguely familiar. In the way that people do.

Let's face it: I know a lot of people. So sometimes people look familiar, and I can't place them. Like last week I was on a no 24 bus on Tottenham Court Road, and a black woman with braids came bounding up to me, all friendly. Hi Sasha. I thought I knew her: couldn't remember where from. Turns out, she used to go to my synagogue (three shuls ago), and her and her two (remarkably cool sons, as I remember them) came over for lunch a couple of times. We exchanged email addresses.

My point is, that in a Gladwell-like connector way, stuff happens to me, people are mostly nice, and you know. I've forgotten the point, actually.

So Pete's been in the papers a lot the last couple of weeks; trouble with Kate. The drugs. And I said to a friend, "y'know, when I had a lunch delivery service, a bloke called Pete worked for me, and he looked exactly like him."

Pete's a common name, though. But this guy was in a band, and made a little cash as a model (he was in some Pizza Express retro seventies press ad while he was working for me), and was a poet. Aren't we all.

Most of my delivery people were friends-of-each-other: people would hook up their mates with this fairly well-paid (I paid £5/hour even back in 1999)job, and I had a series of artistic types, many of whom went to music festivals in the summer and never came back on a Monday morning.

Today, I got out my archive box, and found pay slips and check book stubs with his name on.

Here's what I remember about Pete: he was employee number 16. He lived vaguely locally (Kilburn, I think), and he was the only person to (allegedly) ever steal money off me - £20 to be precise. He featured in a couple of ads. He was rather vague about his permanent address. He was mostly unreliable, and I think only lasted a little while. He appeared to have some kind of habit - or a permanent eye infection - but could mostly keep it in under control. He was a nice bloke, who was used to charming people. Basically immature and irresponsible. Also, in that business, women do a lot better than men, and I suspect he thought the job slightly below him.

So: the evidence. A cheque stub for his pay, and his pay slip. You will notice that while I'm happy to dish the relatively-unintersting dirt about a A/B-list celebrity, I have whited-out his National Insurance number. Because it's one thing telling entertaining stories, and quite another messing with someone's privacy. The "temp deduct" for "-£20" is the money he allegedly stole.

Hello, Pete.