Mistaken identity rides again

[ffutures]

Just got an email congratulating me for my work on "Hot Fuzz" - yet another triumph for Marcus Rowland, production director of Shaun of the Dead, Spaced, etc., who is alas not me.

Not the first time this has happened - I got an odd call once inviting me to do lunch, and didn't realise until months later (when I'd lost the address) what it was about - hope the other guy didn't lose work as a result.

Comments

[captboulanger.livejournal.com]

I stopped using my real name on the 'Net about eight years ago due to a similar situation... a gentleman with the same name as me is a published author with his own website, but no email address publicly available. He came out with a new book, and my email got so flooded with fanmail that my college shut off my free-student-account over it... (they eventually reinstated it under an assumed name the following semester, which took a bit of explaining to my professors after that).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes... I should imagine that somewhere out there is another J.K. Rowling, another Terry Pratchett, and so forth, all heartily cursing their more famous namesakes. Mine are the film guy and an American lawyer, and neither has much of a web presence so it doesn't really cause many problems for me.

The guy I always felt really sorry for was called Anthony Buse, he had an account as abuse @ [Britain's largest ISP] from the 1980s onwards; presumably there was no problem in the early days, when very few people had email, but he refused to change the account name even when he was getting several hundred angry messages a day. In the end the ISP had to pay him compensation to take the address from him.