It was a mixed weekend for David Edgar, both on an off the pitch. First, the Newcastle United defender scored his side’s only goal against Liverpool before conceding a penalty that sealed a heavy 5-1 home defeat. And secondly, he mourned the passing of Harold Pinter with the best piece written on the playwright in yesterday’s Guardian.

Of course one shouldn’t be surprised that a footballer should share the name of a playwright, but I experience a jolt of illicit pleasure, almost, in contemplating that David Edgar might make a telling contribution while careering down the right wing, or that the other David Edgar might miscue his own defensive clearance and score an own goal.

I doubt somehow if Edgar the playwright often gets the misdirected mail of the footballer, though even a writer as well known and widely performed as David Edgar might not pooh-pooh the wage slip of the Premier League soccer player.

There’s a chap somewhere called Michael Coveney who’s the chairman of the Goons Appreciation Society, and as I quite like the Goons myself, I’m happy to be muddled up with him.

But I bet the theatre and film director Richard Eyre used to worry about his mailbox when his namesake was chairman and chief executive of several television companies (and he, the real Richard Eyre, was an active BBC governor). And how did Michael Billington cope with the fan mail when his actor namesake was a national figure on The Onedin Line?

If you have a name that’s as common as Paul Taylor, you’ve probably given up worrying about this sort of thing years ago. The critic Paul Taylor has countless alter egos in the theatre, let alone anywhere else, starting with the American choreographer and a management executive at Samuel French, the publishers and play licensers.

There’s a Scottish drama critic called Mark Brown who now finds himself confused with a Guardian arts writer of the same name, a situation that calls for Equity-style intervention. Elizabeth Taylor the actress and Elizabeth Taylor the novelist is okay because each artist is sufficiently distinguished in her own sphere not to be remotely confused with the other.

But a few degress down the showbiz hierarchy, that fine supporting actor Colin Farrell had to truncate his first name to Col when the younger film star came along. And Kevin McNally has lately had to insert an “R” initial between Christian and surnames in order to avoid confusion, presumably in Hollywood. I was mystified for some time as to why the brilliant character actor Simon Day suddenly became Simon Paisley Day until I realised there was a reasonably well known new stand-up comic poaching his monikers.

I don’t think David Edgar has to worry about his own identity just yet. But if and when the young Newcastle full back starts to achieve cult or legendary status on the St James Park terraces, our distinguished post-Pinterist will not enjoy hearing the annoyingly familiar chant of “One David Edgar…there’s only one David Edgar; one David E-e-edgar, there’s only one David Edgar.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 9:41 am and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.