Page 22 Daily Mail, Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Top tips from
Macca, master
of disguise!
W
here’s Ghis-
laine Maxwell?
since her
friend Jeffrey
epstein’s sui-
cide, she seems to have
disappeared.
In these h i g h - s u r v e i l lance
days, it’s hard to stay hidden.
Before CCTV and the internet,
those who needed to keep their
heads down stood more of
a chance.
As a child, I used to enjoy the
Batman TV series, in which
millionaire Bruce Wayne and his
young ward Dick Grayson
were able to don the
thinnest of disguises
— tights, capes,
flimsy eye-masks —
to pass by unde-
tected as ‘dynamic
duo’, caped
crusader Batman
and robin,
the excitable
Boy Wonder.
even though
Police Commis-
sioner Gordon
used to pay
regular visits to
Bruce and Dick in
their mansion, he
never for one moment
guessed that they were
Batman and robin.
Meanwhile, the Loch Ness
monster made little attempt at
disguise — no tights, no cape, no
eye-mask — yet he was hardly ever
spotted, even though his address
was well-advertised.
When the Great Train robber
ronnie Biggs was on the run, he
underwent a modest bit of facial
surgery and managed to live
quietly in Australia for quite a
while before being rumbled.
even the fugitive Labour MP
John stonehouse enjoyed a month
undercover in Australia under the
pseudonym Joseph Markham
before the Australian police
tracked him down. Oddly enough,
they had initially mistaken him for
the missing peer Lord Lucan, who
has never been found.
In 1966, after the Beatles’ final
tour, one of the most famous
men in the world, Paul McCartney.
decided that he wanted a taste
of anonymity. What would it
be like to be normal, and to
pass unrecognised?
Paul went to a company called
Wig Creations in search of a
disguise. They fitted him out with
a false moustache and a pair of
spectacles with clear lenses. he
found that by slicking his hair back
with Vaseline and donning a long
overcoat he could wander around
unrecognised. he then went on a
motoring holiday around France.
It all came to an end when he
was staying at a hotel in Bordeaux
and felt a yearning for some night
life. he turned up at a local disco
in his disguise but was refusedentry. ‘I looked like a jerk: “No, no,
monsieur, non — you schmuck, we
can’t let you in!” ’ he recalled. so
he went back to his hotel, took off
his moustache, his overcoat and
his specs, and went back to the
night club as Paul McCartney.
Needless to say, he was welcomed
with open arms.
he never regretted his short
excursion into anonymity. ‘Actually,
by the time of the club I’d sort of
had enough of it. Which was good.
It was kind of therapeutic but I’d
had enough. It was nice because I
remembered what it was like to not
be famous, and it wasn’t necessar-
ily any better than being famous. It
made me remember why we
all wanted to be famous: to
get that thing.’
More recently, serbian
war criminal radovan
Karadzic managed to
evade capture for
over ten years by
changing his name,
adopting a Father
Christmas-style
beard and setting
up shop as a homeo-
pathic doctor,
specialising in
sexual disorders.
At the moment,
both Ghislaine Max-
well and the Duke of
York are keen to keep
their heads down. For the
Duke of York, the task will be
harder, as his face is better known.
Might he be able to cash in on his
passing resemblance to the late
Terry scott, the comic actor whose
chubby features graced some of
the least funny comedy series of
the sixties and seventies?B
Y NOW, Ghislaine must
be running out of places
to hide. Where would
nobody think of looking?
here are my top ten suggestions:- Crouched inside the
Archbishop of Canterbury’s
swear Box. - In Chris Grayling’s office file,
under F for ‘Future
Appointments’. - In the overflow room at
this autumn’s Change UK party
conference. - Tucked inside the Acceptance
box for sir Philip Green’s next
celebrity party. - Behind the exercise bike in
Mark Francois’ gymnasium. - Nestled in Vladimir Putin’s
golden treasury of All-Time
Favourite Knock-Knock jokes. - In the same drawer as Diane
Abbott’s pocket calculator. - In Kim Kardashian’s walk-in
wardrobe, between the section
labelled ‘Old Favourites’ and
the section labelled ‘Cheap
and Cheerful’. - In richard Dawkins’
private chapel. - Behind the amplifiers in the
rees-Mogg family disco.
Craig
Brown
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/craigbrown