That voice looks familiar

Date: 16/01/1997

The latest cut-out-and-keep visual guide to Commissioners and their mouthpieces reveals that not only dogs look like their owners.

Unlikely though it may seem, and with one or two notable exceptions, an uncanny resemblance is emerging between many of the porte paroles and their masters.

Stick a false beard and a black hairpiece on Joao Vale de Almeida and you've got Joo de Deus Pinheiro. Remove the same hairy parts of Jochen Kubosch and surely that's Martin Bangemann underneath? And if, on the evidence of the official photos, Sarah Lambert is not Neil Kinnock's daughter, I'll eat my hat. (Pass the ketchup and the salt please.)

But the most noteworthy aspect of this latest rogues' gallery is that while Nikolaus van der Pas is described as the Commission spokesman, and Vale de Almeida is the deputy spokesman, everyone else is described as a spokesperson. For some reason, political correctness does not go all the way to the top.