Did I mention that I'm losing my mind?

This started out as the sort of thought that belongs in a web log. You have a brief flash of an idea, you want to record it for posterity and leave it at that. However, having had to trawl the internet to find the evidence (and I use that word with caution - you may conclude I've proved nothing), it seems that I have a full-blown something on my hands. Possibly a brain disease.

Here is how I got here. I was watching Johnny Vaughan's show on BBC Choice and Bjork was a guest. I suddenly decided that Bjork is the spitting image of Fiona Allen. So, I set out to prove this...

This is Fiona Allen:

She's the daughter-in-law of Michael Parkinson, of (at least part) Spanish descent, and a television actress and comedienne. Most notably, she was in Smack the Pony. I stole her picture from this Guardian article on Smack the Pony.

These pictures are of Bjork:

She's of Icelandic descent, an actress like Miss Allen, but mainly a singer (and I use the word singer with caution too). She's also fairly weird... though in an interesting, rather than offensive, way.

So, can you see the similarities? It's the shape of the face, the mouth, high cheekbones and the hair... well that's what my eyes are telling me anyway.

Perhaps the more interesting thing about making the bizarre expedition to prove that there are similarities between the looks of these two females, in whom I have little interest, was finding out what Bjork fan sites are like. Basically, they're scary places. I looked in two Bjork picture galleries and found catalogues of thumbnails for pictures which were too odd-looking to cherish. Indeed, I think these pictures were so odd-looking that the curators of the galleries had not bothered to look at them themselves. In both cases, the galleries contained duplicates of the same picture, which is a nuisance when you're trying to find a variety of different poses so you can prove an Icelandic songstress is the double of a British comedy actress...

Of course this sort of pointlessness is exactly what makes the internet what it is.

Hats off, then to Bjork Pics Online and The Bjork Picture Archive.

By the way, did I ever tell you about the time I met Sally Phillips?

27 February 2002
Ashley Frieze