She just wants to be... Happy

With a career that depends on a combination of the genetic lottery and the popularity of someone you'll never meet, you float about like a feather on the wind of fame.

Despite this, some people manage to turn the fact that they're a living Tussaud's exhibit into a decent living. They open supermarkets, appear in sponsorship idents on cable channels, and occasionally get to wave at drunken teenagers in nightclubs. OK, so it's not exactly the high life but I'm sure it beats price-checking tinned meat in ALDI.

Unfortunately, not every dead ringer manages to turn their freakily familiar features into a lucrative career opportunity. So spare a thought for Sasha Gordon, whose life has been ruined by her "remarkable resemblance" to Leona Lewis.

Critics might quibble that Martin Lawrence looks more like Leona, when playing the eponymous character in Big Momma's House, but that would be a denial of poor Sasha's troubling life experience. According to the Daily Mail, Sasha "finds herself mobbed and pestered for autographs whenever she goes out in public" - a claim that would only be half-believable if she spent her entire life working in a school for the blind.

Stuck in Penge with no boyfriend and the employment prospects of Kerry Katona, Sasha is more than happy to blame the X-Factor songbird for her misfortune. "My family are all heartbroken about the way my life has turned out.The first problem came with my boyfriend - at the beginning he thought the fact I looked like Leona was fun. However, he soon got fed up of me being pestered by autograph hunters when we went out. It caused so many rows that we split up."

Of course, the cruel irony is that Sasha attempted to find work as Leona's lookalike, but soon discovered that opportunities as scant as the likelihood that anyone would actually mistake her for the multi-platinum popstar. Since Leona has the personality of a low-fat yoghurt, there aren't too many calls for someone to turn up and tell crowds of nightclub patrons that "it's really amazing to be here."

But what about non-celebrity jobs? Well, no-one wants her for those either - "Every time I go for an interview people comment on how much I look like Leona. You can see them thinking that taking me on might be too much of a distraction." It's unclear why, exactly, she thinks anyone might be distracted, unless she had a habit of practising her scales every time someone order a nine-piece box of McNuggets.

If things don't get better soon, Sasha may need to take drastic measures. "In my darkest hours I have even thought fleetingly of having cosmetic surgery to change my face." But there's really no need to spend all that money - I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone with mental health issues (and maybe a well-trained Labrador) smacks her in the face. That ought to do it.