My namesake.

I have a name doppelganger. No not the whole LocalFlightEast/WMAP thing. My real name.

It is shared with a Hollywood Actress. She’s not exactly “A” list but you’ve probably seen some of the films she’s been in and are quite familiar with the roles she’s played.

The problem isn’t necessarily that we share a name, I mean let’s face it, I’m never going to be mistaken for a movie star.

The problem lies in the fact that we have very similar Gmail accounts. They differ by only one letter and a little bit of punctuation. The latter rendered moot by the way Gmail parses anything before the “@”sign.

I get stuff that is meant for her, emailed to me on a fairly regular basis. So far the list includes but is not limited to:

• Invites to parties in L.A.
• Scripts
• Linked in requests
• Messages from Publicists
• Requests from marketing agencies
• And, most worryingly of all, actual plane tickets. Booked in her/my name.

Now I’m a nice person. My reaction to all this so far, beyond mild amusement, has been very responsible. I either ignore them, or if I’m feeling nice an email to the person in question pointing out their mistake and my guess as to what email address they should actually use.

At one point, after receiving my third plane ticket from South Western Airlines, I actually emailed the Actress herself, using my best guess at her email address. Pointing out that she might want to have a word with the person who books her travel.

I'm mildly irritated by the fact that I'm fairly certain that I got this email address first. I took my Googlemail account while it was still in beta in the UK and you needed an invite. In fact it was "Googlemail"(and still is) because there were legal issues over the use of "gmail" in the UK. GMail belonged to another company. Yes, this was far enough back in the history of the internet that there was some question as to whether Google was supreme overlord of all Interweb based thingies. 

So far, and this is the bit that really p!sses me off, not a single person has responded to my helpful emails. Not a single “oops sorry”. Let alone a “Thanks for the heads up.” I’m sure they have me pegged as some crazy celebrity stalker.

For the record I’m not. If I was I would have turned up at LAX on May 12 at 3:00pm and showed my email and credit card and passport, all matching the name on the ticket and flown off to Atlanta.

But I didn’t.

You’re welcome.