(engine running)
(door creaking)
- [John] Hi Jenny, home!
- [Jenny] Oh, hi, have a good day?
- I had a lovely day.
- [Jenny] Great.
- [Matt] Meet John Jemison.
- What are we doing?
- Oh hi.
- Hello.
- [Matt] And, Neil Richardson.
- [Marianne] Did you enjoy it this morning?
- It's been a busy morning.
- [Matt] You could be forgiven they are the same person.
- Yes, it was very exciting.
- [Matt] But you're looking
at two completely, unrelated men.
- What we got for dinner?
- Don't know.
I haven't thought about that (laughing).
- Do you know what's for dinner tonight?
- Ah I don't know.
Have you thought about it?
- [Matt] John and Neil are doppelgangers.
Two people who share uncanny similarities
which in their case extends way beyond the physical.
- After 50 years of marriage, you still don't know
what I want for dinner?
(laughing) - Now, I'm out there
flogging myself to death,
all bloody day,
right,
and you can't even sort out
what we're gonna have for dinner?
- I'm sorry.
- (sighing) 50 years. (laughing)
- I'm trying to work out how I'm sitting
opposite two gentlemen who look so alike.
How do you explain it, John?
- Neil's good fortune. (Matt laughs)
- There probably are two or three very close replicas
of all of us.
With all the billions of humans on the planet,
it's not surprising, we're all actually very inbred.
Our gene pool is not that varied.
- [Matt] But what is even more surprising is
that John and Neil live just around the corner
from each other.
John and Jenny have lived in Braintree, Essex,
al their married life.
- It's Hollowford, isn't it?
- [Matt] By sheer coincidence, Neil and Marianne moved here
a few years ago after Neil hung up his vicar robes.
And that's when the lives of both men took a bizarre turn.
- I moved to Braintree and I knew nobody,
absolutely nobody in the town,
so I was very surprised to find people waving at me,
couldn't quite see why, 'cause, didn't know anybody.
- Did you just think, my goodness, they're friendly,
they're a friendly bunch here in Braintree?
- That was my thought exactly, I thought--
- Yeah, he said that to me,
he said, they're very friendly in this place, aren't they?
- Everyone's waving at me.
I feel like I've lived here my whole life.
(laughing)
- And then someone said, "Hello, John", and waved again
and people came up to me and said, "Hello, John,
"how are you today?"
And then we went to the cafe in the middle of Braintree
and this bloke came over from another table
and said, "My wife says you're John Jemison."
And I said, he must be a good looking chap,
but no, no, it's not me.
(laughing)
And the manager of the cafe came out from the back
and said, "Hello, John, how are you?"
So, I said, look, come here, man.
I'm not John, I'm Neil.
And he said, "Oh, John, stop mucking about,
"don't be silly."
So, I had to get my card out, credit card out of my pocket
and prove to him that my name was Neil, not John.
- It must've been a fascinating idea in your mind,
who is this John?
- It was.
I kept thinking, I must try and find out who he is,
he looks like me, so I'll look for him,
and I looked around, we're shopping,
I looked at people's faces, things like that.
But no, didn't see anyone.
- [Matt] It was a whole year before Neil ran
into this John Jemison chap.
Both were on a day trip with a local history group.
Here's how John remembers their meeting.
- As I got on the coach, I was approached by a man
that I've not met before.
It was really quite weird when this chap with a beard said,
"Excuse me, I'm guessing that you're John Jemison."
Yes, I said with a bow, what have I done now?
"Oh, nothing at all, please don't fret,
"I've been called by your name and it drives me insane",
so I thought it was time to met."
- [Matt] And what a fortuitous meeting
that turned out to be.
- I'm shocked by your priority.
- [Matt] John and Neil discovered a shared love of poetry,
is just one of many things they have in common.
(audience applauding)
- Oh, are there any questions?
- Rattle off the similarities you both have
if you wouldn't mind, please.
- Well, we both trained to be teachers
in the same teacher training college,
although not at the same time.
- We both started teaching exactly the same subject.
Religious education, which isn't exactly a usual subject.
- We both proposed to the women that would become our wives
within a short space of time, one or two weeks
of meeting them.
And 50 odd years later, we're still at it.
Have you been to the Beehive? - No.
- And for the grand crescendos you have sons
that play a particular instrument, what do they play please?
- [Both] They both play didgeridoo.
(laughing)
- How do you have two sons that play the didgeridoo?
Help me, my mind is doing leaps and bounds,
I can't get my head around that.
- It's strange, isn't it?
It's an accident of fate, right.
- We have no idea.
No idea, it's crazy.
(curious music)
- [Matt] But as we'll see tonight,
Neil and John aren't the only ones with the crazy good luck
of finding their doppelgangers.
(laughing)
It's thought that everyone on Earth has a lookalike.
Now, scientists are asking the question, why.
Is it all just a mad coincidence,
or is there some other, deeper explanation?
- I am Niamh. - I'm Terence.
- And I'm Harry.
- we set ourselves a challenge
and we have one month's time from today
to find people that look really, really like us
or almost completely identical.
- [Matt] It started as a bit of a luck.
Niamh, Geany, her friends set themselves a challenge
to find their doppelgangers.
- Oh, I said, hey, I'll just do this for a bit of fun,
will I really find someone, what are the chances?
I'll never find someone.
- But when Niamh,
who back then was a brunette took her search
online, she didn't just find one doppelganger,
she found three.
A girl from Italy-- - Here she is.
And unbelievably, two local lasses
from her hometown of Dublin.
When I met Karen, my first doppelganger,
I mean the first few hours we didn't really say much
to each other, we were just looking at each other silently.
- Really? - Yeah.
- you were just gazing longingly
into each other's eyes?
- Yeah, it was kinda like this, you know?
I was kinda looking at the side,
because you don't nearly want to do, like stare
at each other, 'cause it's weird.
It's cool, it's really cool, but it's weird.
- Because it does actually get to the heart
of your own image of yourself.
- Yeah, yeah, 'cause part of your identity is your image.
- A big part of it.
- 'Cause you meet these people who look exactly like you
or almost completely like you,
but yet, behind that, you have different personality traits,
different confidence levels,
even though you look the exact same,
you don't act completely the same.
- Niamh, tell me about the time you met
your second doppelganger.
- So, Louisa was my second doppelganger.
Oh my God,
And I flew over to Italy to meet her.
So great to meet you and meet your face.
We have this thing in our cheek here's
is this in line? - Yeah, here and here.
- Oh, it's a very strange experience to find yourself
in meeting someone that looks like you.
- What about your third doppelganger?
- My third doppelganger Irene came, I think,
two or thee months later.
(knocking)
- [Matt] Is it unsettling?
- [Niamh] It's unsettling, but it's amazing.
Hi. - Hi.
- Oh my God, it's crazy. - Hello.
- Oh my God, come here. - It's so weird.
- And it really kicks you back a notch,
because you think you're special and unique
and there's no one in the world that's like you
and then you meet someone who looks identical to you
and then you realise, oh you're not as unique
as you thought you were.
- [Matt] It's a puzzling human phenomenon.
Lookalikes like John and Neil,
Niamh and her three doppelgangers are more common
than you might think.
(camera clicking)
In fact it's said that most of us have
at least one dead ringer out there somewhere.
How do you explain it?
- So far there is no explanation for it.
- [Matt] But could there be a scientific reason,
something deep in our DNA that solves the mystery?
Sara and Shannon look remarkably similar,
but as far as they know they're not blood relatives.
The experience of actually meeting someone
that you would consider to be a doppelganger,
what does it feel like?
- Well, for me it feels like you know them.
- Yeah, sameish.
- It's like a stranger, but you know them.
So you can trust them, 'cause they look like you,
which is probably bad, but, d'you know what I mean?
But like if there was no awkwardness ever.
You have such a good jawline, it's actually so unfair.
- [Sara] You're a lot more outgoing and social.
- [Shannon] Yeah, I think it's a Swedish thing, is it?
- Yeah.
But it's not just that.
- Yeah, I'll be quite social and Sara's very quiet.
- Poor old Sara can't get a word in.
- No, but we'd walk down the street,
I'd be like, hi, oh hi, and she's like,
"Why you talk to strangers?"
people just said hi, it's like,
you don't do that, do you? - No.
- I think it's an Irish thing though,
I'll be going, hi.
- [Matt] Shannon and Sara wanted to know
how two people born thousands of kilometres apart,
could look so alike.
There had to be an explanation,
so they decided to take part in a doppelganger study.
- So, who's who?
- [Matt] Headed by genetics professor, Tim Spector
at King's College in London.
You actually believe from a scientific perspective
that everyone has one?
That there's a doppelganger out there for each of us?
- Depending on how you define a doppelganger,
yes, it's kinda weird when you think about,
we do have some other twins, pseudo twins out there,
walking around, looking,
that could take our place quite easily.
- [Matt] Professor Spector became curious
about lookalikes when he saw this photo
of two ginger haired strangers on a plane.
- Everyone kept stopping them, saying they look
like identical twins and these pictures went viral
around the Internet.
- [Matt] He decided to study the phenomenon
comparing doppelgangers like Shannon and Sara,
using the most advanced facial mapping systems available.
This six cameras setup takes shots simultaneously,
giving 3D images which can measure every contour
of the face.
Even though the girls aren't related,
the similarities were astonishing.
- [Woman] You can hardly tell the difference,
I would've thought this is the same nose.
- Yeah, so you're getting a score of 90% on that.
- Really, it's like a twin score.
- [Tim] Yes, exactly like a twin score,
so you have twin noses.
- All right, one, two, three, go.
- [Matt] Shannon and Sara might look near identical,
but DNA testing prove their resemblance is only skin deep.
Genetically, they are strangers.
- Weird.
- [Matt] Nimh and her doppelganger, Irene
also had their DNA tested.
Irene's ancestors came from the Middle East,
while Nimh is of Western Asian descent.
- So there you have it, not sisters,
not half sisters, not even related up to 20,000 years ago.
Mental. - Mental.
(laughing)
- Oh, yeah. - Oh yeah.
- They don't know how fussy.
- Really, really?
But what about John and Neil?
Could these peas in a pod be the product
of mere coincidence?
(laughing)
Professor Spector invited them to take part
in the study as well.
When you went to London for his experience,
did you believe it was real?
- I had my doubts.
But once we saw the equipment
and when we met Professons Spector,
and we found out who he was
and what his qualifications were
and how serious he was, he looks like an ordinary bloke.
He doesn't look like a professor.
Or some famous doctor, but he is.
And he was applying scientific criteria to our,
everything about us.
- I love that, that you two blokes thought,
even as you're in London, you weren't convinced
that this wasn't a stitch up and that maybe
this was all fun and games.
- Well, it just seemed, it just seemed like a load of fluff,
okay, so we look like each other, so what?
- So what, yes.
- Let's look at the eyes
and I think these are amazingly similar.
- [John] Yeah, they are.
- And we got a score for about 81% similarity on that,
it's close to what we're getting
on our identical twin scores.
- Oh, really. - Gosh.
- [Matt] Their noses are an evil closer match.
- Well, you were 90%.
- Really? - Yeah.
That's amazing, really undistinguishable
from identical twins.
- Gee, I mean you could put one of those
over the top of the other
and you would hardly notice anything.
- The nose, the eyes and the lips were very similar on them,
we just ignored the fact that the jaws were very different.
- [Matt] John and Neil's similarities go way beyond
their facial features.
What about body language?
I noticed talking to them
that they would have their hands clasped like this similar
or they'd cross their arms in the same way,
is that something that you actually noted in the study?
- Well, I noted it informally,
we didn't have a way of actually testing it.
(laughing)
And it's something you do notice also in identical twins.
They will pick up a teacup the same way,
they will open a can of beer with the same finger,
all these reflex actions.
(laughing)
- You both have phenomenal respect
for each other as writers
and you value each other's opinions,
I've seen John coming to you, Neil, for advice
on something he's written and vice versa,
I mean, there is a mutual respect there, isn't it?
- Oh yes.
I've asked John's advice on several occasions,
about what I've written.
- And he's had the good sense to ignore it
on every occasion.
Here we go.
- [Matt] To the surprise of John and Neil,
the doppelgangers study revealed
their vast similarities may in fact be the result
of a shared ancestor
that neither of them knew anything about.
- John, you can see here these darker, filled in colours
are where the bulk of your DNA comes from.
And when you compare that to Neil's, look at that.
I mean, you're almost exactly the same,
you're ethnically twins if you like.
- Look at that, I knew that.
- [Matt] Although one small variance has come
as a crushing blow to John.
- Where his was Finland and Sweden
and therefore he becomes more viking than me, right?
Mine was Irish.
- Is that a sore point that he's more viking than you?
- Of course?
- Why?
- I've always thought of myself
as being almost pure viking.
- Well, Neil tells me you have viking fingers.
- I do.
- Ooh, that's a party trick.
(John laughing)
That's one way if anyone's getting around Braintree
and really needs to tell you apart.
- Show me your fingers.
- Yeah? - That's what
they have to say. - Yeah, the trouble is
if somebody says show me your fingers,
you're tempted to do that.
(laughing)
- That's very Essex.
- Why are you refusing to give me any light?
- Here's-- - Now, all this talk
about doppelgangers got me thinking,
is there someone out there, lucky or unlucky enough
to be my dead ringer?
With Nimh's help, I'm about to find out.
- [Nimh] Perfect.
(camera clicking)
- [Matt] Using facial recognitions software
and a search engine, my very own doppelganger is
just a click away.
It's a brutal kind of experiment, isn't it?
- Oh. (laughing)
- Okay.
Tell me you're having some sort of an outraorious laugh.
He's 80.
- [Nimh] (laughing) are we looking
at your future self there?
- This has been a tough morning.
He looks friendly, he does look well fed,
I like eating things.
Maybe that is me.
Oh, I've come full circle.
- Yeah, in a few years.
(Nimh laughing)
- This is a walkout. (laughing)