You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine

d made my day today. Before we go any further, I should say that tonight we were scheduled to go from London back to my home town of Merthyr Tydfil for the weekend, it being Father's Day on Sunday, so we met up at Paddington Station to get the Veal Train (the first supposedly cheap train across the country on a Friday night...which isn't cheap at all, and is, always, packed to the rafters with hot, backpacked people, all muttering about how ridiculous it is that they've paid as much as they have...).

"Look, look," she said, positively brandishing the daily paper at me. "You and Russell, separated at birth!"

Now, here there's a little more background needed. I'm assuming there can't be many men, other than his friends, who have to thank Russell Crowe at their wedding. I did.

The reason is that technically, I owe Russell Crowe my marriage, and a good handful of enduring friendships. When I escaped from Bristol and came to London, all freshly single and up for anything, I got back in touch with a pal of mine from journo school called Mary. When we'd been journoing together, she was writing a story about Captain Jack Aubrey. This, I didn't realise at the time, was my first real introduction to Fan Fiction - she was a heavy Russell Crowe fan, and was writing what she was quite happy to admit was pure smut, about his character in the movie Master and Commander. As I say, I didn't know that, because I was pretty much a blinking, wide-eyed boyscout at the time. Anyway, when I arrived in London, I got back in touch with Mary.
"You do a bit of writing, don'tcha?" said Mary. "Come and join my group."
Her group was a Yahoo! Group for writers, called Feeding Our Beautiful Minds. Nope, still didn't get it. Did I mention? Boyscout.
This turned out to be a writing group mainly - but, importantly, not exclusively, for writers of Russell Crowe Fan Fiction. A Beautiful Mind...yeah, that really should have clicked, but obviously, I'm glad it didn't.

Here among the fan fictionalists, there was a woman from New York State, who didn't write fan fiction, but described herself as the 'group mascot' - encouraging and working with any writers who wanted to 'play catch' with their projects.

That was d. We started talking, and then started talking, and a lot of the rest is history. So - Russell Crowe inadvertantly led me to my marriage.

He also stopped me in my tracks one day early in our marriage, when, walking through our local mall, d came out with this line: "Y'know, Tom Hanks is the kind of man you marry. Russell Crowe's the kind of man you..." There was a strange, growly kittenish noise that followed. Then she grinned, and blinked, and carried on walking.

Clearly, that's a thing that's stayed with me over the years. Can't imagine why.

So, today, Paddington, the paper. Whap, it went down on the table, on which for reasons that now escape both of us, we were having pie and mash. It was a photo of Russell, walking today. And...fair enough, I could see the resemblance. Sure, I still have a face rather more like a Sontaran than a gladiator, and yes, my man-breasts are still rather more perky and pronounced than Russell's (and yes, in case you're wondering, I appear to be on a quest to get the phrase 'man-breasts' into nearly every post - just treat it as a drinking game and get legless!). But in the bubble of belly, the breastiness, the bulging clothing, I could actually see the similarity.

This is a day I never thought I'd see - the day you could almost legitimately compare photos of me and Russell Crowe and think "Mmm...cousins."

So take heart, skinny folks everywhere - if Russell can do it, you can do it. You too can have a body like mine. Send cheques for $100 to find out how...