I stopped in my tracks.

Which is something I rarely do in Tesco’s car park, as I tend to try and escape that particular pit of despair as quickly as humanly possible.

I did a double take, followed by a treble, then quadruple take. It could not be, surely?

Yet there before me, loading his Fiat Punto with the weekly shopping, was Doctor Harold Shipman, granny-slayer extraordinaire.

Now, like you, I believed he had died four years ago after hanging himself by a bedsheet, but clearly not. There he was, bold as you like, in the middle of the day.

The only other explanation is that this person just happened to look exactly like one of the most notorious serial killers in the modern age. And this explanation does not stand up to scrutiny.

Imagine, if you will, that you bore a striking resemblance to a mass murderer who received unprecedented media coverage in the early noughties. What would you do? Would you continue to cut your hair in the same manner, grow the same beard, and forgo changing your glasses for contact lenses?

Or would you make an effort to change your appearance so you did not look like the most unpopular man amongst the pensioner demographic since the CEO of Gala Bingo increased prices by 20%?

Now, if the person you look like is famous for a good reason, then you have every incentive to retain the same appearance, obviously. In fact, I have a friend who is the spitting image of Will Young, and during the Pop Idol competition that Will Young ultimately won, he willingly received the adulation of people in pubs and clubs who assumed he was the real Will Young. Of course, the day that Will Young ‘came out’ is probably the most unhappy day of his entire life, but that emotional pain is countered by the fact that most of his friends and I found that day, and every single one since, truly enjoyable.

So, after much deliberation, I am left with no choice but to assume that this simply can not be a lookey-likey, as no-one would leave their appearance so similar to that of the prolific Nan-silencer, therefore it must be the real Harold Shipman, back from the grave, and making the most of this week’s Clubcard offers.

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