Have you every googled yourself to see what the results are?
I did, and found two other versions of me in the world, a cricketer in London, and an ice hockey player in Canada...




Canadian Stuart actually works at Queens University in Kingston. On the map this looked like a short drive from Toronto, but map scales are somewhat different in this continent and it was actually a 3 hour drive!
Kingston is a leafy green, studenty town on the edge of lake ontario which was actually the first capital of Canada.
Oh and it has 5 prisons...

So i arrived at Queen's University, where thousands of students were enjoying the end of their first week back.
Conversation followed like this:
Me: Hi, does Stuart Pinchin work here?
Yes, upstairs
Me: Hi, i'm looking for Stuart Pinchin
Do you have an appointment?
This just felt bizarre, saying my own name in the third person.
And people reacting like it was a perfectly natural question, whilst i was suppressing a massive grin!

So i met Stuart Pinchin! He's great - i don't know how you would react if someone turned up
and said "hey, i'm from thousands of miles away and we have the same name", but he invited me home for dinner with his family!
His colleagues thought it was all very amusing and commented on our similar heights...
This even sounds strange trying to type it!



So more Pinchins! (Shiela, Ian and Kate), and a great family, they moved away from the rat race to a more rural and relaxed lifestyle (sound familiar parents?)
And they are all active and love the outdoors, and go on amazing sounding canoe trips and stay in a cottage in the middle of nowhere
And then ice cream and stories about bears, foxes, dogs, broken water pumps, importing pudding filling into australia, more serious discussion of native american reservations, school food regulations...

So the big question, are we related? Neither of us had any family trees to hand to put together but i will work on it.

I'm still smiling, it seems ridiculous that i turned up somewhere and was welcomed so warmly due to no more connection than a name, allbeit the best name in existence...



Also you should watch Dave Gorman's inspiring show about when he travelled the world finding his namesakes...
http://www.davegorman.com/projects_are_you_dave_gorman.html