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, Paul Whitehouse’s bittersweet series about a nurse making home visits to patients, most of whom are played by Whitehouse himself, is back on Radio 4. Whitehouse has made this a speciality - he also plays multiple callers on Down the Line - and he’s following in an illustrious line of multiple-part players…

Keep it in the family…

The same actor playing relatives is a well-known film trope… and throwing a time-travelling DeLorean into the mix really doesn’t help with the general confusion. In the Back to the Future series Michael J Fox plays Marty McFly, Marty McFly, Jr, Marlene McFly and Seamus McFly. Ben Stiller played brothers in The Cable Guy, and Alec Guinness memorably played the entire d’Ascoyne family in Kind Hearts and Coronets.

But which one is he?

As soon as you hear the line “but… it’s uncanny. It’s like looking in a mirror!” you know we have entered the world of the imposter film, when a doppelgänger is discovered that can take the role of anything from crown prince to jewel thief to president. Obviously this gives one actor the chance to play both parts. Charlie Chaplin did it in The Great Dictator, Leonardo di Caprio did in The Man in the Iron Mask and so did Sacha Baron Cohen in The Dictator.

It’s twins!

Playing twins seems to be very common for female actors. Hayley Mills played identical twins in the Parent Trap, as did Lindsay Lohan when it was remade. Tilda Swinton played the Thacker twins in 2016’s Hail, Caesar!, and Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin both play two sets of identical twins (hang in there) in the 1988 American comedy Big Business. Real-life twins Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen play twins and sisters in a baffling Hallowe’en children’s film, Double, Double Toil and Trouble.

Special mention….

Who else but Mel Brooks could get away with playing Moses, Comicus, Torquemada, Jacques, and King Louis XVI in 1981’s History of the World? He also played three roles in Blazing Saddles.

Multiple Sacha Baron Cohen's in The Dictator

Eddie Murphy has made multiple parts a feature of his film career. From the Nutty Professor films in which he plays Professor Sherman Klump, Buddy Love, Lance Perkins, Cletus 'Papa' Klump, Anna Pearl 'Mama' Jensen Klump, Ida Mae 'Granny' Jensen, and Ernie Klump, Sr to playing four characters in Coming To America, he’s only rivalled by Mike Myers in the Austin Powers films in the ‘is that him AGAIN?’ stakes.

Maybe for an ego-ridden actor, the only way you can make sure you’re not outshone by your co-stars is by playing all the parts yourself, and as special effects improve, we’re only going to see more of this. Stand by for Gladiator II, in which Russell Crowe plays everyone. Including the horses…