They’re double the trouble
Joseph Stalin
Stalin is said to have used a double called Rashid who learnt to mimic the Soviet dictator by training with an actor who played him in propaganda films. In 2008 and at the age of 88, former dancer and juggler Felix Dadaev revealed he was another Stalin decoy.
Saddam Hussein
The former president of Iraq used a rota of at least three lookalikes. Sources claimed one double even had plastic surgery.
Uday Hussein
Latif Yahia was a stand-in for Saddam’s son Uday. The pair had been at school together and classmates had commented on their resemblance. Dominic Cooper played them both in 2011’s The Devil’s Double.
Adolf Hitler
Hitler used a series of stand-ins including Gustav Weler. In 2011, a book even claimed a double for Hitler and his lover Eva Braun had been killed at his Berlin bunker in 1945 so the real pair could flee for a new life in South America.
Fidel Castro
The US tried to assassinate the Cuban leader more than 600 times during 50 years with wacky plots ranging from an exploding cigar to a toxic fountain pen. One of the ways he evaded these schemes was to use a team of three doubles to confuse his enemies over his location.
Bernard Montgomery
In 1944, ahead of the D-Day landings, actor ME Clifton James – the spitting image of Field Marshal Montgomery – publicly flew to the Mediterranean to impersonate him, fooling Nazi spies into thinking the Allies were planning an invasion in Southern Europe rather than Normandy.
Boris Yeltsin
After having 1,500 photos of the president analysed in 2008, a Russian MP claimed Putin’s predecessor had been replaced by a surgically altered double. He even suggested the supposed double had two fingers on his left hand removed, just like the real Yeltsin, who lost them playing with a grenade as a child.
Elizabeth II
Ella Slack from the Isle of Man spent 30 years being a stand-in for the late Queen during rehearsals for televised royal engagements. Thanks to her similar size and stature, Ella made the perfect royal double.
Vladimir Putin
Mad Vlad dismissed speculation he employs a lookalike but last year the Ukrainian head of military intelligence claimed he was using at least three body doubles. Major General Kyrylo Budanov even questioned whether “the real Putin still exists”.