I just paid £17 to have my passport photo taken and it is NOT MY FACE

[HarrietKettle]

I mean, I suppose it must be.

I look like I've just been arrested for drink driving offences, under the influence, and it's 4am in a downtown NY drunk-tank.

This is going on my ZSL pass for my charges and I to visit the zoo (I'm a nanny) so not ideal.

I applied make up. I brushed my hair. I wore a jaunty shade. I skipped along to Snappy-Fucking-Snaps on Charlotte Steet, London as I thought they'd take a nicer photo than my local one in Acton.

The lady asked me which one I wanted, they were all shite but one didn't make me want to cut my head off, I said that one please, she robbed me of my £17.99 and I said I'd pop back in half an hour.

I SWEAR TO GOD SHE SWITCHED THEM to the worst photo of my face I e ever seen. I look awful, I have never looked so awful, and if that is honestly my face I'm cancelling the extortionate wedding photographer we've selected and having my one year old nephew take the pics, at least he's likely to chop out my head.

I now have to present a picture of me looking like a criminal with addiction problems to my new boss for the ZSL card, and I'll have 7 monstrosities left that will never see the light of any day.

I looked fine in the mirror beforehand. Fine.

My fiancé says I'm like a slightly less Chanel-ed version of Natalie Portman (we've had his eyes tested and they're grand but I know he's slightly biased) so WHAT THE FUCK happened. The image is seared on to my brain forever. And the godforsaken ZSL card.

Anyone else look shite when they thought they looked ok?

DISCLAIMER LIGHTHEARTED I know I'm lucky to have a face etc etc

What was a lovely shade of rose pink lipstick in real life became bright orange in the hands of HM Passport Office.

I look like an aged newsreader who has given the man from the Tango ad a blowie.

My first work pass made me look as though I'd been embalmed. I insisted on a second attempt only to finish up with a look of such horrified shock on my face that you would have been forgiven for thinking that the photo guy had whipped his dick out and was brandishing it at me in a menacing fashion. I went with the embalmed version.

This has cheered my up immensely. My new passport photo is awful. I'm no oil painting but dear god, the photo is miserable.

Many years ago, I went from having long hair & wearing glasses to short hair & contact lenses. I thought I looked like a different person, so I had a new photo done (don't know if you can still do that, ie have 2 in the same passport?) When the new passport came back, it was so bloody obviously the same person I felt embarrassed every time I used it.

My current passport photo is just so flattering, it makes me look like I'm holding a bloodied hatchet just out of shot :(