So after Sarah getting confused with a Methodist Minister near Norwich, and Pete being locked out of the building at work today when the security team decided that he and an employee in Reading with the same forename, surname, middle initial and date of birth as him were really the same person, I wondered if there were any other people called Richard Peat out on the Internet.
Now I know that there are at least two others in the country. One phoned me a few years ago when I had a letter published in a magazine, however we swiftly discovered that aside from reading the same magazine and having the same name, that was about all we had in common. I know about the other, because his ex-wife contacted me thinking that I was him, having looked me up on the internet. It was a little embarassing for her at the time, but anyway.
Certainly when I’ve looked around before, there hasn’t been that much aside from my own stuff come up on any search. Peat being a relatively rare name, I wasn’t expecting much, so I put my name into Google.
The first matches out are my own stuff as usual, but the next link is quite interesting, the John Armitage Memorial to help composers of the future, awarded to Richard Peat, he looks to come up again as a visiting staff member at City University, and as a composer listed in some concert details.
Also on a musical topic, there seems to also be a Richard Peat providing information about deleted recordings.
Looking at the others on the first page of results, if you want a lawyer, I have a namesake who is a barrister, specialising in the areas of financial services regulatory, company and insolvency law. Further down I have a namesake writing about the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation.
So pretty broad mix of namesakes, although what is quite amazing that in amongst all of those, it is my blog that comes out top of the pile on the search!