It wasn't me. Blame my doppelganger

The thought of running a marathon makes me turn green, says Paul Carter. But not as green as the wristband they made him wear at a music festival

I’ve just got back from a music festival, where I was given a delightful wristband to wear so I could get onto the viewing platform. Now, this wasn’t any normal wristband. Not like one of those simple white ones made out of sticky paper. Oh no, this one was special. It was luminous green, and said DISABLED on it in massive, purple, screaming letters, which amused me greatly. I’d never been branded before.

Now, making me wear a wristband to identify me as a bona-fide, paid-up member of the disableds is surely a bit like making Amy Winehouse wear a chuffing-enormous-packet-of-fags-shaped badge to show people that she likes the occasional smoke and the odd drink. Being as obviously disabled as me does have its benefits, but it can sometimes be a bit rubbish being so recognisable. It means I can’t get away from people I can’t be bothered to talk to, or blend into the background inconspicuously. I’d be a really rubbish spy.

It also means that I get recognised by everyone I’ve ever met in my entire life ever, no matter how long ago it was, or how inconsequential the circumstances. The more random the better, in fact, as they always tend to open with the infuritating, “do you remember me?” It puts the ball embarrassingly in my court and sets the conversation off on the path of being like a really crap game of Guess Who?

“It’s Marjorie! I used to see you with your mum on the number 16 bus every second Tuesday morning in 1984. Do you remember?” That kind of thing. It may not sound annoying, but my mum knew a lot of Marjories. And I evidently had an infinite number of nursery teachers.

What I find very weird, though, is when people mistake me for other people. A man stopped me in the street one day and happily told me how he’d seen me “doing the marathon” on TV the week before.

Before I continue, I should clarify that I have never run a marathon in my life, or participated in any activity that could possibly be construed as a marathon. I am more likely to be cast as the next Incredible Hulk than I am ever even to consider running a marathon.

“It was definitely you!” he said indignantly, after I’d laughed at the very suggestion, as if I’d somehow absent-mindedly forgotten the fact I’d slogged 26 miles the day before. Idiot.

Another man (it’s always men, sadly) at Oxford Circus tube asked me if my name used to be John, and when I said no, he looked dead puzzled and muttered that I was a “dead spit” as he walked away.

It got me thinking that maybe there’s a doppelganger no-armed-no-legged-bloke clomping around central London. If there is, just remember, the next time you see someone similar staggering past your house at 3am, obstructing traffic and walking into lampposts, it’s not me. It’s definitely the other guy.