“Okay, let me make sure I’ve got this right,” I say. “You’re Darren, right? In the yellow T-shirt?”
“David”, the twin replies.
“Oh, sorry! Hi David, nice to meet you.”
I am speaking to the identical brothers – they are very identical – on Facetime.
Their mum appears in the background. “That is Darren – he’s winding you up!”
The 24-year-olds burst out laughing.
I – like so many others before me – have been duped.
Twins would swap classes as teacher couldn’t tell them apart
The only one who has never mixed them up, it seems, is mum Louise Kerr.
The 46-year-old says: “I was always able to tell them apart, I just knew straight away. I knew from their personalities as well.
“One of their teachers at nursery struggled though,
“I went in to pick them up one day and I was like, ‘Why have you got Darren in your class?’ and the teacher said, ‘We’ve had him all day and I think we had him yesterday as well’.
“When I asked David why he wasn’t in his own class he said, ‘Darren gets a better snack than me so I swapped over'”.
The pair attended Downfield Primary School until P5 and St Andrews Primary School for P6, before attending St Paul’s Academy.
On another occasion, Louise says, David came home from school without Darren and said his brother had been kept behind because he was in trouble.
“But he wasn’t,” she says. “It was David who was in trouble, but the teacher thought Darren was David and so he had to go and do his brother’s detention.”
Darren has not forgotten about this.
“David always used to get me into trouble,” he says.
“One year I was aiming to go to this school trip to M&D’s Scotland’s Theme Park and I was behaving well to make sure I would be allowed to go.
“I had just two weeks to go and then David put two detentions on my name so I didn’t get to go!”
It’s a useful trick David still employs on occasion. “If I get caught leaving work early I just blame Darren.”
Darren, a roofer, runs No Drip Roofing, while David, a joiner, works for Dundee City Council.
They will soon work together as they launch joint-venture NDR Roofing and NDR Contractors.
Shock news of twins at 5-month scan
Louise, who runs Benson’s Bar on Arbroath Road, fell pregnant with the boys when she was 21.
She says: “It was weird because I had always said I wanted twins – and I wanted boy twins.
“I only found out when I was five months pregnant that I was having twins.”
Usually an expecting parent finds out they are having twins at a 12-week scan.
Louise explains: “At the very first scan, one of them was hiding behind the other one, so we couldn’t see that it was twins.
“Then I was actually looking at the scan screen and I said, ‘Is that two heads I just seen there?’ and she said ‘Yes, did you not know you were having twins?’ and I said ‘No’.
“I already had a little girl who was five months old and a three-year-old boy and I thought, ‘Oh my god, now I am going to have twins’.
“It was a shock at first but I was happy because I had always wanted twins.”
Louise, who met and married her partner in her 30s, was a single parent for most of their childhood.
She says: “It was chaotic because I was only 21 and I had four kids.
“We kind of grew up together, I was just learning as we went.”
It must have been tough?
“The hardest part was probably the sleepless nights,” she says.
“As you were feeding one, and putting him down, then the other one would be waking up.
“Normal people would have one baby with four hours of sleep in between feeds, whereas I was having just two hours in between every feed.”
Twin telepathy?
Despite the challenges, Louise describes raising the boys as “an absolute joy”.
She says: “They had a language growing up – it was kind of like baby talk.
“They would sit together and talk to each other in baby talk, but it was like they were properly talking to each other.
“Then they would look at me and laugh.
“I was like, ‘They’re laughing at me! What are they saying?’
“They have always been like that. They always know what the other is thinking.”
She recalls giving them both money as children to buy themselves a sweet at the shops.
“They both went into different shops and came out with the exact same sweetie.
“It’s just the way they are, they are both so in sync with each other.
“They are best pals, they are always together.
“Wherever David is – Darren is not far from him.”
Darren recalls the first time he and David spent the night away from each other.
He says: “When I was eight, I went to stay at a mate’s house for the first time, and it was the first time I was away from David.
“So he locked himself in the bathroom and started crying.
“He wouldn’t come out of the bathroom all night.”
It seems they’ve gotten used to spending time apart though – as they now live separately with their respective girlfriends.
‘People would double take everywhere we went’
Louise, who admits she used to dress the twins in matching outfits, says people have always found them fascinating.
“People always used to say, ‘Are they twins?’ and I would say, ‘Well, look at them, of course they’re twins!’
“It happened every day.
“People used to double take, they used to be really fascinated with them.
“Because the boys had really blonde hair when they were younger they stood out a lot more as well.”
Louise has four other children: Conor, 28, Celeste, 25, Tia, 20, and Summer, 12.
“All the siblings fight with each other, but they love each other so much and they’re always there for each other,” she says.
“We are a really close family. A lot of people see that. They can see it a mile away.”
The twins do everything together, including boxing, playing football and going to the pub.
They even got their first tattoo together.
David says: “We do copy one another, it’s like a competition.
“Darren wanted to get veneers and I didn’t want them done.
“But I couldn’t have him being better looking than me, so I had to go and get them done as well.”
He adds: “I’m always with him, he is my best mate.
“The only downside if that he steals all my clothes.”
They also travel often, booking a holiday together at least once a year.
Recent excursions include Benidorm, Tenerife and Magaluf.
They also have plans to drive to Germany for the Scotland game at the Euro’s next month.
But some of their adventures take place slightly closer to home.
“Last year we bought a boat and then sank it at Broughty Ferry beach.
“David didn’t put the plug in.
“We jumped in and water started coming in.
“I said, ‘David there’s too much water coming into the boat’ and he said, ‘Nah, it’s meant to be like that’, but it wasn’t.
“It sank all the way to the bottom.
“We had to wait for the tide to go out to get it back.
“We didn’t even get out of the pier.”
Who is the oldest twin?
Finally, having saved the most important question for last, I ask who is the oldest.
Darren: “I’m four minutes older, so I’m the big brother.
“I remind David of that every day.”
Laughing, he adds: “I’m also taller, just to add that in”.
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