Leamington Is Full Of The Strangest People, no. 4: Anti ID Theft Derek

Having enjoyed a hiatus from gazing at the inevitably hairy naval of my hometown of Leamington Spa, I thought it was about time I resurrected this short series of posts that throw a blogging super trouper onto the underbelly of Queen Victoria’s favourite Spa town…

Today is the turn of Anti ID Theft Derek.

I first encountered Derek in Tesco which in terms of meeting weird people has the highest weird-to-normal ratio of any other venue in the UK (not including Stringfellow’s or Spearmint Rhino or other establishments of that ilk).

Now, Derek is one of those people with a very definite sense of identity. If he was a mallard he wouldn’t be content with cobalt blue and electric green feathers, no, he would be blinging himself up with bird of paradise plumage and other peacockery. Derek, you see, likes a bit of bling. Gold chains (multiple) around his neck; gold chains (multiple) around his wrist and the lot topped off with a porkpie hat resplendent with a red feather erupting up from the headband like a miniature erection.

Identity is a big thing with Derek. You cannot miss Derek. And Derek, I am sure, never fails to miss himself – Alzheimer’s is never going to be in Derek’s genetic makeup though obsessive compulsive behaviour might be.

Now talking of bling has probably given you the impression that Derek is in his twenties. Some thrusting young buck with a uranium knuckleduster hampering his joystick skills. This is not the case. Derek is in his sixties or I am the unwanted love-child of John Lennon and Lisa Tarbuck.

An old(er) man with bling is never a good thing. For one thing it can really disrupt an MRI scan just when you really need it the most.

Anyway, what caught my eye about Derek (aside from the gold accoutrements and the red feather stiffy) was the way he paid for his goods (one bottle of vodka and a four pack of cheap beer). He paid by card – nothing strange in that – but when it came time to punch in the PIN he placed his wallet tight over the machine like a barrier and then sealed the top of it with his own face thus appearing as if he had on a welding mask and was about to administer some kind of industrial coup d’état to the checkout machine. In fact he reminded me a little of that episode of Doctor Who where people had gas masks erupting out of their faces. I half expecting him to start asking the entire shop in a high-pitched voice: “are you my mummy”. Which the cashier would have had to answer no to as he was, well, a he.

Talk about paranoia.

Did he really think I was going to look over his tweedy shoulder, memorize his PIN code and then put it in The Times via some improbable crossword cypher or just publish it on-line in some easy-to-download format for America’s Prism surveillance programme to pick up on?

Plainly Derek has some real identity issues.

He’s scared people are going to want to steal his identity above all others and become the oddball glory that is him.

And I have to say, thinking about it, who wouldn’t want to swan around in a hat that comes complete with its own wafty hard-on?

Exactly.

I rest my case.

Like Two Peas In A Pod

OK, I’m coming clean.

I can’t keep it up anymore. The lies. The deceit. Living a double life.

I look in the mirror sometimes and I don’t know who it is that’s looking back out at me. I feel like a double-agent in my own life. Two names. Two identities. Two wildly differing lifestyles.

In one I’m just a humdrum office bod. I go out 9 to 5 and work for the man.

In the other I am the man. I have people looking after me. My people. I have an agent and a manager and a PA. I go off to crazy locations and shoot incredible movies that people love and adore. Everyone adores me. Women drool and men sigh. Women want me and men want to be me.

Yes.

It is time to come clean.

I am Johnny Depp.

Captain Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissorhands, Ichabod Crane and John Dillinger... they were all me too. Me as Johnny Depp playing them, I mean. It all gets so confusing. I’ve snogged Christina Ricci, Penelope Cruz and Keira Knightly to name but a few.

And they were all shit. No-one beats my wife.

And my wife, who you all know as “Karen”, is really Vanessa Paradis. I may as well out her too while I’m in the mood to be honest.

I’ve tried hiding who I am for years. In every film I try and disguise my look, change my face so that the real me is not recognizable. But years ago I got lazy. I made a film called The Ninth Gate and I couldn’t be bothered to wear coloured contact lenses or shave my head. I told my agent the days when I blacked up and played the banjo are long behind me. It’s PC or nothing now. So I appeared as myself. As me.

I thought I’d got away with it but someone at work recently saw the film... made the connection and they’ve outed me.

So now my workmates know that for all these years they’ve been working alongside Johnny Depp and they never realized it.

I’m sure, as with you, there will be a sense of chagrin. A sense of opportunities wasted. Well, look. I’ll sign your autograph books now if you want. I’ll pose for photos. I’ll kiss your wives, girlfriends, babies, even you.

I’ll take you to Cannes next time I have a movie out. That’s a promise.

Because, finally, here’s the proof. See below.

I rest my case.

Do I Need To Get A Life?

So I was walking home the other day and I walk past three yellow tabarded workmen who have plainly spent the morning worrying at a huge hole in the road in between supping copious cups of tea and admiring a picture of Cheryl Cole’s champion cleavage in The Star and I notice that something is amiss.

(And no it wasn’t that Cheryl has forgotten to shave her chest.)

The workmen, their tabards and indeed their very large, shiny new, lime green flatbed truck are all totally unidentifiable.

There are no monikers, no motifs, no company name. No telephone number, no web address, no “I wish my wife was as dirty as this van” graffiti.

They are to a man, personae non gratae. Men with no names. They do not exist and so, legally, how can anyone make them accountable for this big Bernard Cribbins-esque hole that they’ve just opened up in the tarmac?

They could be anybody. They may not even be kosher workmen. They could be... er... tarmac thieves. They could be terrorists about to plant a dirty bomb in the even dirtier sewer pipes of Leamington Spa. They could spit on my shoes, shit on the pavement and make lewd comments to the Cheryl Cole look-a-likes walking by and who the hell would we complain to?

‘Cos once they drive off they are gone forever. Untraceable.

I know what you are thinking. Why, Steve, are you wasting your not inconsiderable intellect worrying about workmen who don’t have a company name on their van when you could be pouring your magnificent energies into your new novel or exposing the many shortcomings of The Big Society bollocks that the Coalition Government are currently spouting and – look – you’ve even missed an opportunity to publish a suitably salacious picture of Cheryl Cole at the top of this post.

Well, the reason is: I don’t like Cheryl Cole.

And regarding the workmen, let me recount to you a story that was once told to me by an old workman a couple of years ago who took a sighing break from his cup of tea and Page 3 dolly-bird to wise me up. There was once this derelict house, see. It had been falling down for years. One day a team of workmen turned up with vans, diggers and demolition equipment – a whole team of them. None of the vans had names on and likewise the uniforms of the workmen. But hey, they had to be kosher because it was broad daylight, there was so many of them and they had, like, real JCB’s and everything.

Over the ensuing weeks they demolished the house. All of it. Every brick, tile and breeze block. They then took it all away. Every brick, tile and breeze block and left a big gap in the line of building’s in that street.

Some weeks later a man from the council turned up to survey this renovation-worthy council property and wondered where the hell it had disappeared to.

Oh, thought the neighbours. We now realize what has happened. It’s been stolen.

Cue dramatic music followed by a humungous Homer Simpson doh!

Still think I need to get a life?

Harrumph! Well when people start nicking the roads or the houses near you... don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Overkill

Identity theft is a real problem.

I don't think anybody would argue with that. While the papers might not thrum daily to the groan of "he stole my house, bank balance, Facebook account and Peugot 106" horror stories it is accepted that having one's identity stolen (or at the very least borrowed for nefarious purposes) is a very real risk in the modern age.

We all take steps against it, I am sure. Shredding personal documents before putting them in the rubbish. Not storing our passwords and account names on our computers. Not writing down our credit card pin numbers (yeah right - who doesn't do that?), etc.

And talking of credit cards, we cut them up, don't we? When they expire or the bank issues us a new one because they've been taken over / taken over someone else and have changed their name we snap those horrid bits of plastic in half and maliciously quarter them with a sharp pair of scissors. Maybe even cut them in half again just to be sure.

But the question is: how small do you cut them up?

I only ask because I suspect I go over the top. It is a curious foible of mine to reduce old credit cards down to something akin to the molecular level. I recognize there is no logic to this endeavour because any letters or documents that I receive from the bank I merely rip in half and bin without a second thought. If someone wanted to rifle through my rubbish (avoiding the dirty nappies - good luck) and piece them back together and ascertain my account numbers, it wouldn't be too difficult.

But credit cards trigger a primitive sense of paranoia in me.

Not only do I reduce them to confetti but I also have to distribute them over as wide an area as possible. The splintered components cannot all go into the same bin just in case there is a madman out there (and he would have to be mad - and very good at jigsaws) who will spend months locating all the pieces and then somehow gluing them back together again to gain access to my bank account information.

To neutralize this risk I put approximately half into the bin at home and then very cannily distribute the other half into the many street bins that line my morning walk to work. It would be a labour of Hercules to recover all the pieces and put them back together again. Sometimes I even mix the pieces of different cards just to confuse the would be identity thief even more. I like messing with their heads, you see. I like to think that the UK's asylums are all full of would-be identity crims who have all been driven mad by their attempts to reconfigure my old credit cards.

You can laugh if you want to. Call me nutty and neurotic if you have a mind. But nobody - and I mean nobody - is ever going to steal my identity by nicking one of my old credit cards.

I can guarantee it.