The Invisible Dan.


While editing photos for July's Hitchin Mostly Comedy Festival today, I inadvertently turned the comedian Daniel Cook into the sleeve of The Miracle by Queen.

 

Maybe this is how album covers are invented: by chance events. Perhaps Freddie was fiddling around with a primitive version of Photoshop in 1989 (or an airbrush?) when he accidentally morphed all his band members’ heads into a monster four-person amalgam. Either that, or Queen genuinely started life as conjoined quadruplets that were separated by innovative surgery, and that’s in fact the miracle the album title’s referring to; let’s face it (or four-face it): they’d have to be incredibly fortunate to survive the operation when you consider the nature of their overlap; they've barely got a pair of eyes between them.

I like to imagine it was Anita Dobson who performed the operation, as the waiting list was too long for it to be done under the NHS. Speaking of Dobson, I find it notable that she’s one of a minority of people on the planet to have the selfsame hairstyle as their husband; it’s not a good look on one of them, so why would it be better on both? I suppose it saves time to have the same cut, and that time could be better spent sourcing sixpences for Brian to use as plectrums or building signature guitars from fireplaces; for someone who isn’t a Queen fan, I seem to know a lot of trivia; must be something to do with a misspent youth.

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