The entertainment industry is warning audiences to beware of celebrity knock offs – cheap low quality versions of established stars which, it is widely feared, are threatening to undermine the reputations of some of Hollywood’s biggest names. “The market is being flooded by these doubles – they’re being knocked out by Far Eastern sweat shops, using inferior materials,” explains top entertainment analyst Nadia Funsax. “They’ve been turning out counterfeit designer goods for decades now, so it was only a matter of time before they started banging out knock offs of top celebrities.” At first the knock offs were confined to making fake personal appearances at mall openings and the like, but their activities have, of late, been taking a more sinister turn, as they allegedly abuse their passing resemblance to celebrities to gain sexual favours, harass women and engage in drunken anti-social behaviour. “The trouble is that whilst they might look a bit like the real thing, they can’t perform like them,” says Funsax. “That’s why you get so many tales of ‘Russell Crowe’ going on drunken rampages – it’s knock offs who can’t hold their drink like the big man can. Trust me, there’s no way the real Crowe would go around throwing phones at hotel receptionists and the like after a mere fifteen pints.” Indeed, one young groupie was alerted to the fact that she hadn’t spent the night with the real Zac Effron by his woeful performance. “He took nearly an hour to get it up – in the end he had to spend twenty minutes looking at porn on the internet before he could even get to half mast,” claims nineteen year old Diane Jubbly. “When we finally got down to it he only lasted a couple of minutes before he shot his load – and even that left him gasping for breath. I knew that there was no way the real Zac would be so pathetic in bed!” Whilst Jubbly’s ‘Zac Effron’ was exposed as a fifty-two year old Thai man who had been ‘reworked’ into a facsimile of the teen idol by a Bangkok knock off factory, many others continue to be mistaken for the real thing, with dire consequences for the careers of the real thing. “These knock offs are secure in the knowledge that they can do just about anything they please, and it will be the real celebrities who get the blame,” says Funsax. “Who is ever going to believe them if they try to say that it is an ‘evil double’ committing these outrages in their name – they’ll just be dismissed as drunk, on drugs or just plain crazy!”

However, one top celebrity has finally decided that he has suffered enough at the hands of these knock offs and has decided to risk ridicule by going public about his travails. Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford has frequently been forced to deny reports that he has been frequenting sleazy New York strip joints, ogling the performers and shoving ten dollar bills down the cracks of their arses. According to the sixty something swinger, the real culprit has been a New Jersey meat-packer named Bob, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ford. “He’s like some kind of evil doppelganger – forever attempting to destroy my professional credibility,” says Ford, who claims that not only has ‘Bob’ been impersonating him in strip clubs and brothels all over New York State, but, more disturbingly, has also starred in several unsuccessful movies attributed to Ford, including K-19, Hollywood Homicide and What Lies Beneath. “As if I’d make shit like that – even I’ve got standards! He’ll be hearing from my lawyers!” Ford apparently hopes to obtain a court order forcing ‘Bob’ to have compulsory plastic surgery. If this legal action proves successful, a number of other Hollywood stars are likely to follow his example and take action against the evil lookalikes who have been dogging their careers for years. According to industry sources, Val Kilmer is planning to accuse a Wisconsin tyre re-groover named Ned of having impersonated him in just about every film he has allegedly made since The Doors, as well as a bogus marriage to Joanne Whalley-Kilmer. “It’s not as if the guy even looks much like him”, opines Funsax. “He’s overweight and puffy-faced – nothing like the real thing. Yet he keeps making really crap movies in Val’s guise and, worst of all, giving really bad performances in them!” Another actor suspected to have suffered at the hands of cheap knock-offs is Nicolas Cage, although his representatives have refused to comment on allegations that the gone-to-seed looking middle-aged guy who has starred in a series of mediocre and unmemorable films is actually a fake Cage. “Come on, could the Nic Cage of Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas or adaptation really have fallen so far that he’s prepared to appear in that terrible remake of The Wicker Man, or, worse still, Ghost Rider?” asks Funsax.

The analyst suspects that the spread of the celebrity knock offs might be down to certain elements of the media and entertainment industry. “With major studios under pressure to cut budgets, there’s no doubt that these knock offs provide film makers with an opportunity to exploit the box office pulling power of major stars at a fraction of the cost,” says Funsax. “Let’s face it, most of the films they make these days are knock offs anyway – inferior remakes of classics that didn’t need remaking.” She also believes that tabloids, TV showbiz reporters, celebrity gossip websites and magazines are sponsoring many of the knock offs. “They need something to fill their pages and air time with, but the problem is that most real celebrities are pretty well-behaved these days,” she claims. “So, to create copy, these media outlets send the knock offs out on drunken binges, beating up clergymen, molesting livestock and urinating through people’s letter-boxes.” However, other commentators have cast doubt upon the very existence of these celebrity knock offs, instead claiming that they have been invented by the supposedly wronged celebrities themselves, as a convenient explanation for their own unacceptable behaviour. “It’s just pathetic really,” comments Jeff Planker, arts critic of the West Tuscon Free Advertiser. “Harrison Ford is too embarrassed to admit he likes going to nudie bars, so he says ‘Oooh, it wasn’t me, it was my evil double Bob’. Why can’t these celebrities just concede that they’re as weak and fallible as the rest of us?” In a bizarre development, Hoboken meat-packer Bob Blowstick has launched a legal claim against Harrison Ford, accusing the actor of ruining his reputation by repeatedly impersonating Bob in a number of sleazy New York sex clubs. “Thanks to that bastard, my wife is threatening to divorce me after seeing newspaper pictures of someone looking like me hanging out in strip joints,” he rages. “Who does this guy think he is, stealing my identity so he can visit titty bars with impunity?”