Would the real Joey Jeremiah please stand up?

People of my generation will most probably remember coming home from school and watching the original Degrassi series, which cntred around a bunch of Canadian school kids and their lives. The series was quite forward-thinking in tackling a range of controversial topics from teen pregancy to teen suicide. ABC 3 currently is showing the latest instalment (imaginatively titled 'Degrassi: the next generation'). It features some of the original cast members (now adults of course).

One of the main characters is a guy named Joey Jeremiah who is portrayed (both in the original and current series) by Pat Mastroianni.

Here is a picture of Pat as Joey in the original series (I may or may not have had a crush on him).


Here is Pat now (please note the lack of hair...this feature will become important later).


On Tuesday, the MX newspaper published a photo showing a guy holding up a picture of Joey Jeremiah. I dont have the original newspaper clipping but I did manage to do a google search for the guy's name (because obviously I have nothing better to do) and found another picture of the same guy.

The photo caption claimed that this guy played Joey Jeremiah in the series and that he was due to be launching something in Melbourne on Thursday. Clearly this guy is no Pat Mastroianni. Either the newspaper caption got it horribly wrong (which is not inconceivable) or some other dude is trying to masquerade as Joey Jeremiah. Now it's also possible that the character was portrayed by more than one actor (think Pippa from Home and Away, or James Bond) but I don't think that was the case here.

No, I think what we have here is far more sinister; a case of either bad journalism or someone trying to ride on the coat tails of a B-grade celebrity.