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Essays 


Phil Tickle

The first thing I knew about the photograph was when I opened the Mail. My partner Karen, she works in the Evening Mail and you'd have thought she'd have warned me, wouldn't you? And I was reading through and I turned to the centre pages and God! I nearly choked! I mean the first thing I thought was:
"They can't do that without asking your permission! Surely not!" Luckily, when I looked at it, I saw I was right in the crease and I thought perhaps people wouldn't look. So I shouted to Karen and I said: "What's this in here?" And she said "What?" She hadn't recognised me! So I thought, it's not so bad, if she didn't recognise me no one will. Plus I've had a moustache all my adult life until about four months ago when I shaved it off, so I thought: that picture of me without a moustache & hellip; no one will recognise me. So I went to work the next morning, and before I'd got there they'd been round, and there were photocopies stuck up all over the place. How they recognised me I don't know. I could hardly recognise myself!


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