10 Things You Never Noticed In The Cornetto Trilogy
7. The Bill Bailey Twins (Hot Fuzz)
One of the goofiest, oldest but funniest reveals in Hot Fuzz is the twist that Bill Bailey has actually been playing twin police officers throughout the film. Depending on when he gets him, Nicholas Angel is either entirely accommodated or brusquely sneered at by the desk sergeant. You can tell them apart pretty easily: one of them has a smart, combed back hair cut, while the other one has a mess of frizz atop his bonce. They don't appear on screen together until the very end, and even though it's obvious it's coming, it's still very funny. Except there's another way of telling the pair apart, and it's fantastically nerdy: one of them is seen reading Complicity, a crime novel by Scottish author Iain Banks. The other is always buried in a book by Iain M Banks, which is the name the very same writer used to differentiate his more "literary" work from his just-as-celebrated sci-fi novels. So, they look like the same person, but they're not. Sort of. Bonus round: Complicity is about a series of murders that are, technically, socially just, sort of like the activities of the Neighbourhood Watch Association...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
Bonus round: Complicity is about a series of murders that are, technically, socially just, sort of like the activities of the Neighbourhood Watch Association...