I’ve written before about my obsession with the US television chef, Guy Fieri. Naturally, as a result of this I’ve done a lot of Fieri-related research. What does that entail? Well, it basically just comes down to liking a lot of Guy Fieri pages on Facebook and following a bunch of Guy Fieri accounts on Twitter.

Down this Fieri-hole though, there’s a lot of weird stuff. Take @GuyFieri_ebooks for example. It’s a bot account that tweets out random Guy Fieri quotes from the man himself. Itself a parody of the famous @horse_ebooks, @GuyFieri_ebooks might just be the most Twitter thing that’s ever happened.

Hi, I'm Guy Fieri. OH, you wanted that medium rare? I've made a grave misteak — Guy Fieri (@GuyFieri_ebooks) February 14, 2015

This is GUY FIERI making the guy from SMASHMOUTH eat loads of EGGS while the song from SHREK plays! Wow. Also @fart from weird twitter is there.

But my favourite thing that I stumbled across was the world of Guy Fieri lookalikes. Just like it sounds, this is the world of men who look like Guy Fieri.

I say “world” but I’m not entirely sure there’s even more than one guy (*Guy) as we’ll see in bit. For now, let’s just jump right in, shall we? Here’s the Facebook page: Guy Fieri lookalike.

178 likes there on Facebook, which is pretty respectable. Let’s zoom in on that profile pic.

I doubt that anyone would see this guy and be like “omg it’s Guy Fieri!” – although these two women appear to be fairly convinced.

From what I can tell, you need three things to be a successful Guy Fieri lookalike:

Being slightly overweight Wearing sunglasses Having that specific spiked blonde hair / goatee combination

This particular lookalike adds a fourth however:

4. Being really into cooking

Seriously, check it out!

Like this isn’t a necessary step, man! To be a lookalike, you just have to…. look like the person. Actually copying their interests is a great step, but not an essential part of the ‘looking like someone famous’ package. Really, I’m pretty impressed.

To learn more about what the life of a Guy Fieri lookalike is like, I actually messaged this Guy. Here’s how the convo went:

What a swell guy! I’d love to meet this chap just about as much as the real thing. He even seems to be promising to have cancer-healing properties, which is neat too.

This pic is just great:

I wonder if he made this sign himself. I like that it includes a little disclaimer that it’s “just a Guy Fieri lookalike” – don’t talk yourself down mate! I want to hang with this guy so bad.

This is how our conversation ended:

I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do with that information. But it’s cool nonetheless!

I’m left with a lingering question though. On the Guy Fieri Lookalike facebook page there’s a few posts from this fellow:

The content of the post kind of implies that Ken Brodman is the Guy Fieri Lookalike of the page’s fame. But he doesn’t really look like the Guy Fieri featured in the above pics. Zoom and enhance time!

Yup, pretty sure this is a totally different guy. Though extra points for standing next to a Guy Fieri style car (and also apparently being committed to this look as early as 2004, at least two years before Guy Fieri even became a TV chef!). This creates further mysteries:

Are there two Guy Fieri lookalikes in the mix here? How do they relate? Do they know each other? Is there some kind of Guy Fieri lookalike civil war brewing? Why is Ken writing on the Guy Fieri lookalike Facebook page as if it was his? Why do both fake Guys have a strange obsession with sick children?

Unfortunately, I haven’t been brave enough to actually message Ken yet. So for now these questions must remain unsolved.

SEPTEMBER 2016 UPDATE! INTERVIEW WITH KEN NOW AVAILABLE HERE.

But I’m entirely delighted that this weird subculture even exists. I kind of feel it’s almost an only-in-America thing. Thankfully, I’m wrong.

Just head to lookalikes.co.uk and check out the celebrity chef section. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out who these are meant to be…

p.s. happy valentine’s day i guess