Double take

LEONARDO Di Caprio sits next to me. Sandra Bullock faces me on my right and Dorian from Birds of a Feather is opposite me on my left.

The four of us enjoy a coffee as we chat about their past, their current work schedules and their future plans.

Leonardo tells me he's taking a break right now.

Sandra is waiting for the release of her new film, and Dorian is busy dashing about, making appearances all over the country.

I detect a few puzzled glances being thrown our way.

Well, I guess it is a bit strange to come across a couple of Hollywood heart-throbs and a popular sitcom star sipping coffee together in a little Hampshire kitchen shop.

But maybe that's because these three celebrities are not quite what they seem.

Their presence in a kitchen shop at Port Solent is a bit of a give-away, but put them at a glitzy showbiz party and you probably wouldn't even guess they were lookalikes.

Dorian (who is actually Margaret James from Portchester) tells me: "When I go to the supermarket people peer round the corners at me and you can see them nudging each other as they go round. Some of them come and ask, 'you are Dorian aren't you?' and when you say no they say, 'oh, you're only saying that because you don't want us to pester you'."

The hazards of fame follow Sandra (real name Jacqui Cooke from Bournemouth) everywhere she goes too.

Her father had to step in one night when they were together in a bar and a man was struck by Jacqui's Hollywood looks.

She explains: "We were in a bar and this man was staring at me all the time. My dad was getting annoyed so he asked, 'why are you staring at my daughter', and the man said, 'she don't half look like that bird who drove the bus in that film!'

"About six years ago I was in a bar with a friend and some people she knew, and they all said, 'your friend looks like Sandra Bullock'.

"People kept saying things like that to me over the years but I didn't do anything about it until earlier this year, when a friend of mine said instead of talking about it, do something about it."

So Jacqui put on a wig and some Bullock-esque clothes, and sent some photos to Portsmouth-based lookalikes agency Class-Act UK. Her photos so impressed the agency's owner, Fareham DJ Mark Hatton, that he put Jacqui on the books straight away.

Jacqui hasn't come dressed to look like Sandra Bullock today, which is probably why - and Jacqui admits I'm not alone in this - when I first meet her I'm not totally sure whose double she's supposed to be. She's going straight to her "mundane office job" as a PA in Bournemouth after the interview, and she doesn't particularly want to turn up looking like she's just stepped off the set of Speed.

She works in the same office as her 17-year-old son, who she says is surprisingly unembarrassed by the idea of his mum impersonating a sexy screen star.

"When I first started doing this he thought it was great, and now people at work have found about it as well I think he gets a bit of a kick out of it," says Jacqui.

"This is much more fun than being a PA. It's a break from the routine and a bit of excitement.

"I think the attraction is the fantasy of it - it's escapism, being something you're not, being somebody else.

"The biggest kick I got was when I walked into the De Vere Hotel in Southampton for a lookalikes night, and this chap came up to me and said, 'can I have my picture taken with you, I love Sandra Bullock'. That gave me such a buzz - it was fantastic!

"When I was a little girl I dreamt of becoming a famous film star, and when I do this it's like my dream's come true."

Unlike Jacqui, Margaret doesn't need to do anything to her appearance to look like Dorian. But Dorian isn't the only character Jacqui has been transforming into on a regular basis for the last four years. She also does a very convincing Queen Victoria, Elizabeth 1, Marlene Dietrich, and, most recently, that wicked puppy-slayer from the classic 101 Dalmations story, Cruella Deville.

Margaret says: "I enjoy playing them all but Dorian is my favourite because I look like Dorian even when I'm not making an effort.

"I was up at the tip one day getting rid of garden rubbish and a gentleman came up to me and said, 'I'm right, it is you, it's Dorian!' - I just couldn't stop laughing.

"It can get a bit embarrassing at times but it has its good points more than its bad.

"When I go into a restaurant the staff aren't rude enough to ask if I'm Dorian, but we do find we get more attention.

"We went to a restaurant in Fareham a couple of months back and all the waiters were peering out the kitchen and everybody came out eventually to have a look. But they didn't actually come and say are you Dorian, are you Lesley Joseph?

"The waiter was very attentive and at the end of the evening my husband gave him my card so they knew I wasn't -but only after we'd paid the bill!"

She adds: "It's a lot of fun. When you just do an ordinary day's work and you're an ordinary housewife and you go out and do something like this, it just adds variety to your life."

Mark, who has been a nightclub DJ for the last 15 years, decided six years ago to set up an entertainment agency from his home in Suffolk Drive in Whiteley, supplying all sorts of different acts from stilt walkers to body-painted dwarves and lookalikes. Two years later, he moved the business to offices in Portsmouth and Class-Act - which now has 200 lookalikes on its books, as well as hundreds of other entertainers - was born.

So if you think you've spotted Lily Savage, Hugh Grant, Prince William, Nicolas Cage, Richard Branson, Liz Hurley, John Cleese, Clint Eastwood, or Posh and Becks out and about in Hampshire, the truth is you're probably very much mistaken.

Mark, who still djs at Ikon and Diva in Southampton every weekend, says: "We get people coming in to see us all the time claiming they look like somebody famous. Most of the time there's a resemblance to the artist but you have to look 60-70 per cent like them to make it.

"You know straight away when you see someone if they can pull it off."

And if you can pull it off, it can be quite a lucrative sideline to have, with each lookalike earning between £300-400 for an appearance.

"Some people take it too seriously though," says Mark.

"They think they are the person. We've got a stunt double for Pierce Brosnan on our books and he believes he's James Bond so much he bought a Bond car."

Even if you naturally look like a famous film-star, making sure you don't let your resemblance slip can be difficult when your double keeps changing their appearance. Jacqui spends hours on the Internet checking what Sandra Bullock is up to - whether she's grown, cut or dyed her hair, what style of clothes she's wearing and what her latest film project is.

But 22-year-old Jon Brown has drawn the line at copying Leonardo Di Caprio's latest long-haired look.

He'd rather stay looking like the heart-throb we all know and love from Leonardo's most famous blockbuster, Titanic.

Jon, who has been Class-Act's lookalikes manager for three years, was only 18 when he first spotted his own potential in the lookalikes stakes.

"I was working in a video store and a lot of people kept coming up to me and saying I looked like Leonardo Di Caprio. Then one night I was with a friend of mine who agreed I looked like Leonardo, and we decided it was time we did something about it," recalls Jon.

The next thing Jon knew, he was walking on stage at a nightclub in Southsea as Leonardo Di Caprio. The club, where he works as a DJ, was holding a party night in conjunction with the local cinema, to promote Titanic.

Jon, who lives in Portsmouth, has always wanted to be involved in films, so when he saw an article about Class-Act in the local newspaper and walked into the agency's offices to ask for a job, he was thrilled to be told he could start straight away.

"Music and movies have always been my two loves in life," says Jon.

"There are lots of Leonardo lookalikes now - they've just come out of nowhere because of The Beach. Class-Act have got three besides me."

But, after appearing on a series of the Vanessa show about lookalikes, Jon has decided he's quite happy to take a backseat while his rival Leonardo lookalikes enjoy a slice of the limelight.

He says: "I felt the daytime TV producers were determined to make a mockery of me and I just didn't want that.

"You can go on doing it for so long as someone else that it can get to the point where it's an identity crisis, and you just want to go back to being yourself.

"I want to carve my own niche in the entertainment industry as me."