Royston van der Kerkoff's Blog

Recently, I’d noticed a few more cases of people in the public eye sharing their names. Some I’d been aware of for quite a while, but it was almost like there was a sudden spate in the last few weeks, so I noted a few down. Following the same law that makes hundreds of cars just like yours magically appear when you get a new one, more then appeared as well.
I suspect it’s due to the massive amount of information we’re exposed to these days that makes this happen more often than it used to. Or at least if it used to happen, it’s now far more visible in an era of sound-bites and short attention spans.
I came across the two matches that started me thinking about this quite close together. As someone brought up on TV and computers, it’s hardly surprising these were the source. More interestingly, they are both similar in the sense that the people involved are, to say the least, not very similar.

Danielle Lloyd:
Watching Question Time recently, I noticed in the end credits that the Head of Production was Danielle Lloyd. Not having anyone watching with me at the time, I had to content myself with a smirk rather than saying ‘ha, look, Head of Production is Danielle Lloyd’. I could have said it, but cats don’t care. Obviously this is a different Danielle Lloyd to the one famous for…….. erm, well let’s ask trusty google. ‘Model and TV presenter’ according to her own website, though serial WAG, racist and night club fight victim seem to be just as regularly mentioned. A sad sign of the times is that even with my preference for 100 hits per page on google, the BBC QT version is nowhere to be seen. In fact even a search for ‘danielle lloyd question time’ only finds her on the 5th item in the list! An article in the Birmingham Times.

Michael McIntyre:
Yes, of course, you all know him as the Level Design Director for the next Prince of Persia game, The Forgotten Sands. Or maybe you don’t. When I saw an interview with him on joystiq, I couldn’t help but see the ‘Roadshow’ MM working in the office, bobbing his head, geeing up the programmers with some jolly japes and the odd switch up into castrato for added laughs, and a little skipping to enthuse the graphic designers……..

A couple of others came to mind after these set me off:

Michael Jackson:
The singer/songwriter/dancer has been written about more than enough I think, but I can’t help wondering what his namesake’s colleagues go through. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson has been in the news quite a lot for various reasons, and reached the very top of the military, garnering great respect. So it must have been hellish for any squaddies that met him face to face and had to resist the urge for a high pitched ‘ow’ and a grab of the crotch. I thought we’d got lucky when I briefly scanned the wiki page for Gen Sir MJ, but I think it’s a grammatical error: ‘Sir Mike has condemned the approach taken by former Donald Rumsfeld as ‘intellectually bankrupt’

Steve(n) Wright:
A slight stretch there, but I had to put this one in, as unlike the previous selection, these two have actually done the same job as a Radio DJ, on the same station! Unless I imagined it, Steven Wright used to be on Radio 2, but the Internet seems to disagree. (Google, if you’re going to ask ‘do you mean’, give me a ‘no’ option as well….)
If you have spotify, Steven Wright has two albums on there. Very funny.
(I would have added Dickie Davi(e)s, but I think one differing spelling is all I can allow myself)

Richard Bacon:
Given that the majority of my TV watching is done via the Internet, I’m not sure why I’ve seen so many end credits recently, but this was another. Not particularly interesting as I know very little about the Richard Bacon’s, TV presenter, or cameraman on Question of Sport.

Adam Clayton:
After many years in U2, has also managed to make his way up through the divisions and also now plays for Carlisle United in League One, and has even scored a few this season.

and finally,
Heather Brooke:
I caught HARDtalk on BBC News Channel a couple of nights ago, and the guest was Heather Brooke. I’d never heard of her before, but she was described in the program’s intro as ‘the driving force behind the expose on British MPs expenses’. It was a very interesting interview (by Sarah Montague), well worth checking out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rvzhv/HARDtalk_Heather_Brooke_journalist_and_campaigner/ though as with most iplayer content, it won’t be there for long.
The other Heather Brooke you’ll have to look up for yourself. But not at work. Or in front of your parents. Or children (any children). Or religious people. In fact, maybe just don’t. After all, there must be loads of these matching names these days. Just find your own instead. It’s for the best.