My face is a passport to trouble

Pav's Patch

IT must be something to do with my face, but whenever I go abroad I seem to court trouble.

I never actually get into trouble but I’m always the one who’s stopped for that extra check when everyone else is waved through.

Once, at Heathrow, the security woman intensely scanned the picture in my passport and then, after what seemed an age, said: “What happened to the moustache?”

“Oh dear,” I thought, “she’s going to pull me up because I don’t look like my picture.”

Suddenly, my cowboy holiday in Arizona was fading into the sunset like Roy Rogers on Trigger.

“Just decided I wanted a change of look,” I replied. Which wasn’t true. I actually shaved off the moustache so that a girl I had met at a Hallowe’en dance would no longer recognise me.

Keen to escape her clutches, I’d also told her I was called Raymond. Hope she doesn’t read the Chronicle although, if my memory serves me correctly, I’d be amazed if she can read. You’ve heard of the Brothers Grimm? She was the sister.

Anyway, I needn’t have been so pessimistic. “Pity,” said the security woman. “It suits you.”

An altogether more frightening experience took place on the bus from Berlin to Hanover in 1978, when the Iron Curtain still divided Europe.

An East German border guard got on the bus, clutching his Kalashnikov assault rifle. And yes, you’ve guessed it, he decided to speak to me.

For all I know, he was asking if I’d had a nice time. But I don’t speak much German beyond “Achtung Spitfire”, so I just waved my British passport and tried to give him a look which said: “Mess with me mate and the Queen will send a gunboat.”

The thought of me trying to mix it with a gun-toting Soviet-era guard is, frankly, absurd, but he walked on. He probably thought I was a gibbering idiot, which wasn’t too far from the truth.

Another time, it was my own fault. A bloke in uniform at Dallas/Fort Worth airport was walking about as we waited to go through immigration, asking if we had any foodstuffs or, indeed, mad cows.

Ever the clown, I chirped up: “I married one.” Big mistake. From the moment the words left my mouth it was clear he didn’t understand the joke. He thought I was taking the mick and, if you’ve ever been to the States, you’ll know that US border officials are not like the vast majority of Americans. They are far from warm and welcoming.

I gave him a weak smile, apologised, and looked away.