It’s not a place you’d expect to find a Premier League striker, but today Conservative Party MP Guy Opperman was so convinced he’d seen the Liverpool footballer Mario Balotelli in the Commons public gallery that he tweeted to his 5,000 followers: “Liverpool striker Mario Balotelli has popped in to Commons Gallery to watch the Drug Policy debate -wearing sharp suit, pink shirt &a poppy”.
The tweet injected some much-needed excitement into the afternoon’s debate and members of the press gallery strained to get a better look at the Balotelli look-alike, who was innocently watching MPs discuss the merits of drug decriminalisation. Daily Express political reporter Owen Bennett tweeted at the footballer asking him to clarify matters.
Unsurprisingly, it was not the Liverpool player watching the debate, but 55-year-old dancer and chairman of Haringey stop and search monitoring group Ken Hinds.
The first picture of the Balotelli doppelgänger emerged and, well, apart from his mohawk hairstyle, he didn’t look anything like him.
Ken Hinds told the Telegraph that he’d been approached by a number of MPs asking if he was the footballer: “I had to disappoint them and say no - but he is a great man and I am only privileged to associated with man like that.”
Hinds has worked as a mediator for Scotland Yard and a special adviser for Operation Trident, the Metropolitan Police’s initiative to end gun and knife crime. In 2009 he was awarded £22,000 in compensation from the British Transport police for being arrested and charged for watching at a distance as police detained a teenager at a London railway station.
