LONDON: For Susan Scott, business is booming – with just three months to go to Britain’s royal wedding, her Lookalikes model agency is struggling to meet the demand for royal “doubles” of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
“For us the royal engagement has taken the place of Christmas this year,” she says about the brisk demand for royal pretenders from media organisations, advertisers and events managers.
“Since their engagement in November, our phones have not stopped ringing,” says Scott, who set up Britain’s first lookalike agency in 1979.
Times have not always been as good. In recent years, bankers and business firms cut back on spicing up an office party with a celebrity lookalike guest.
Lookalikes of actor Sean Connery and Queen Elizabeth are among favourites for hire among the 8 000 celebrity lookalikes the agency has on its books.
But for the last few months, would-be princes and copy-Kates have easily topped the list of applicants.
“At the last count we had 28 Kates but far, far fewer Williams,” reported Scott.
“There are lots of pretty girls in the UK and Kate’s quite a traditional look, quite English. William is a bit trickier,” explains Helena Chard, who works with Scott.
It was challenging to capture the “blend of royal confidence and humility” that William projected, she sats.
His combination of chubby cheeks, toothy grin and thinning hair made William, 28, difficult to double. That’s where Andy Walker comes in, a 25-year-old security worker who has given up his job to become a full-time William double.
On a number of engagements, his pretend-bride has been Kate Bevan, who is Britain’s most prominent copy-Kate by far. At the age of 21 – eight years younger than her role model -–Bevan has swapped her career as a pharmaceutical assistant for a role as a fairy-tale princess.
“She comes across as quite shy and that’s easy to imitate,” says Bevan, who is reported to have had lucrative offers for photo shoots and corporate events from around the world.
– Sapa-dpa