Alexi Indris-Santana wasn’t really Alexi Indris-Santana. Instead, the Princeton athlete was born James Hogue, not a self-educated orphan from Utah but a wily opportunist from Kansas. A natural runner by either name, the student was the focus of a Chameleon podcast I caught last week. The story revealed how he’d conned the system to create a new identity, stealing bicycles and status wherever he went.

The year was 1988, back when impostors had it easier, spared the pesky evidence of digital footprints. Of course, scammers will scam regardless the era, but this audio yarn teemed with good old-fashioned chutzpah. As host Josh Dean put it, Hogue was his own “talented Mr Ripley”.

Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors. The film’s title has entered our general vocabulary.Credit:

The reference caught my ear, as lately I’ve been hunting film nods. You know the kind, where a speaker only needs to utter Groundhog Day, say, to put you in the picture, that endless loop of existence. Just as The........

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