Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty I joined Marilyn Monroe, Walter White, Ozzy Osbourne and other tribute artists on a cruise where imitation is its own art form
Prefer the Guardian on Google INT. DECK 7, LE CABARET ROUGE, 11.37pm
Frank Sinatra, palming a can of Sprite in one hand and the fist of his beautiful red-headed wife in the other, sat in a dark corner across from Jeff Bezos, who looked like he was waiting for him to say something. But Sinatra said nothing. He’d been mostly quiet all evening, and now in this cabaret he seemed even more distant, staring out past fog and strobe and Bezos’s strong bald head and into the large room where at least half a dozen men had basically shattered a bistro table trying to get a better look at Marilyn Monroe. Sinatra’s wife knew, as did Roy Orbison and Austin Powers, who stood nearby, that it was only minutes before he was supposed to go onstage, and that forcing any sort of conversation on him in this mood of focus would be extremely stupid.
The fact was, Sinatra had already been waiting for more than an hour for his moment at the mic, and at this point would have been more than fine with just heading back to his cabin. He was tired of the constant low-grade pitch in gravity under his feet. He was still annoyed that he’d nearly lost his luggage on the first day here, a fact his wife was not letting him forget; was humiliated that he never really got his onboard wifi – wifi he paid for – to work all week; had been viciously massaging his kidneys throughout the past four songs; and now, at this strangulating moment, had to sit through the noises being made by the group of military veterans Monroe had just asked to join her in a conga. Sinatra, wincing, was the victim of a condition so common around here that most people accepted it as a given. But when it got to him, shot through his personal plumbing, we were looking at a man in crisis. The fact was – and he’s going to kill me for saying this – Frank Sinatra was seasick.
Three nights and about eight hours earlier, select members of the Sunburst Convention of Celebrity Impersonators boarded a 169,000-tonne cruise ship in civilian disguise. They crossed the gangplank by sandalled foot and standard wheelchair, in panama hats and Bermuda shorts, naked of the costumes, pancake makeup and in some cases false breasts required to faithfully look like their lookalikes. Alongside an estimated 4,000 other, non-impersonating passengers slated to set sail with them, these 20 professional plagiarists, under cover of normie human camouflage, slipped silently into the crush.
“LORD I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS MUCH COCONUT RUM IN MY LIFE,” yelled a man on his phone, jabbing his free hand into his free ear.
“MAN IT IS COMPLETELY SUNNY – I SAID SUNNY – YOU KNOW WHAT, I’M GETTING A CALL FROM DONNA – DONNA – YEAH LOOK I’M NOT TRYING TO HAVE HER TRY AND TEAR MY ASS IN HALF AGAIN SO I’M GONNA HAVE HER CALL YOU.”
Welcome to the open-air bar on the 18th floor of the MSC Seashore, a luxury mega ship with the fuel economy of an oil tanker and the handling of a Marriott. That was the man seated to my left, silenced by the drink handed to him by a bartender. To my right was a woman in a shirt that read: “I DON’T GIVE A SHIP”, and behind us, beyond the bar – which led out on to the pool deck, the pool deck’s smoking section and two Jacuzzis – was the Atlantic Ocean, foamy and real under the sun above Port Canaveral, Florida.
I was seated smack in the centre of the ship’s…