D.F. Marenghi?

The first time I heard the name Garth Marenghi was when the creators of the character, Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade, were being interviewed in the wake of their Perrier Award winning show, Netherhead. The interviewer became increasingly exasperated at their refusal to act out of character and eventually turned to the camera and growled, "That's not real comedy!" A few years later I chanced on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace on Channel 4. With very little publicity surrounding the show, it suffered from low ratings and was discontinued after only 6 episodes. And yet those episodes are true gems. Garth Marenghi is a horror writer who describes himself as "the dream weaver" and "the titan of terror". The main conceit behind Darkplace is that it was made in the 1980s but considered too mindblowing to broadcast and has lain the vaults ever since.

Although Garth Marenghi's personality and style are obviously a spoof of such abysmal 1980s horror authors as Clive Barker, Guy N. Smith, Shaun Hutson, James Herbert, Graham Masterton, etc, I was more struck by his physical resemblance to the prolific short story writer D.F. Lewis, to the point that I actually half-believed that Garth was based on him. I waited for others to point out the resemblance. No one did. Almost six years have passed and still nobody has commented on the likeness. Could it be that I am grossly mistaken? It therefore seems only proper to let the public decide the truth. Here are two photographs of the celebrities in question, but I haven't labelled them. It's up to you to work out which one is Garth Marenghi and which one is D.F. Lewis...