22nd May 2012

Sun girl Julie Moult gets starry-eyed at celeb impersonators’ bash

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Behind them, Simon Cowell shows uncharacteristic shyness as he asks Hugh Hefner if he’d mind posing for a photo with him.

Neil Diamond has just winked at me and Bono seems to be flirting shamelessly with a groupie as rapper LL Cool J hugs country star Kenny Rogers.

It’s a pretty impressive collection of celebrities in anyone’s books.

But all is not what it seems. Elvis is alive and well and chatting to Amy Winehouse, while Elizabeth Taylor is looking pretty good, considering she died a year ago.

Here, at the annual Celebrity Impersonators Convention in Las Vegas, seeing is certainly not believing. Take Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne, for instance. They’re both here — but only because lookalikes Andy Monk and Caroline Bernstein have flown in from the UK. Both are having a ball.

Father-of-two Andy, 52, from Nottingham, runs a lighting and sound company and has been impersonating the TV impresario for seven years, since his brother noticed the similarity between the two.

He says: “I did meet Simon on the Richard & Judy show some years ago. They asked him to pick the best out of three lookalikes and he chose me.

“He said, ‘If you can make some money out of it, then go for it’.”

And that’s just what Bono impersonator Pavel Sfera does too — though he admits he doesn’t always come clean when people mistake him for the U2 singer.

The 46-year-old from LA says: “When I was in New York a guy from Africa came up and started crying about all the good work he thought I’d done for Ethiopia.

“I just said thanks as graciously as I could.”

Meanwhile, Oprah Winfrey, Sean Connery and even Barack Obama are posing for the paparazzi outside Vegas’s Golden Nugget Hotel.

Not surprsingly, the fake Whitney Houston draws a lot of attention.

Trina Johnson Finn, of Kansas City, gets a standing ovation when she performs a collection of the late singer’s greatest hits.

She says: “I try my best to sing like her but it is hard to match her tone. There will only ever be one Whitney.”

Asked if she thought her death would be bad for business, 43-year-old Trina adds: “I hope not.”

In fact, having your doppelganger die need not be the end of your career — just ask the three Elvises at the event, or the two Frank Sinatras, Elizabeth Taylor, Amy Winehouse, three Marilyn Monroes, Tupac Shakur and the two Michael Jacksons.

Amy — in reality 35-year-old Monica de Diego, from La Rioca in northern Spain — has never been busier. She has just finished a three-month run playing in clubs in Chicago and is already booked for a summer in the south of France.

The Vegas convention is held over four days each February. One highlight is The Reel Awards, where industry professionals vote in the typical showbiz categories.

This year saw Ronnie Rodriguez (Johnny Depp) win the Best Actor and Jason Scott (Neil Diamond) honoured in the Pop And Rock category.

For former headmaster George Kane, being Playboy boss Hugh Hefner gives him ample opportunity to flirt with young women.

George, 72, of Fort Meyers, Florida, has been married for 50 years and says with a grin: “My wife tolerates it.”

San Franciscan Johnny Moroko is a concert technician by day — and Mick Jagger by night.

He says: “I was a kid when someone first spotted the similarity but it wasn’t until six or seven years ago that I decided to give it a shot.

“That was after I met a Jerry Lee Lewis impersonator in an elevator and he convinced me to give it a try. I’d love to be able to quit the day job and do this full time.”