Twins: Pranking teachers and bar staff with my identical brother

David Blevins and his identical twin brother Stephen regularly get mistaken for each other as few people can tell them apart

"Being a twin is an exceptional bond. You have a best friend before you're even born."

That's the view of David Blevins on his twin brother Stephen.

"We know each other inside out, we think similarly, we feel similarly about things and it is a privilege to have that sort of close connection."

David is the senior Ireland correspondent for Sky News while Stephen is a primary school principal.

They are identical twins and even their teachers found it very difficult to tell them apart.

"We were dressed the same when we were little and the teachers, particularly in primary one and two, asked my mother to embroider our initials into our school jumpers because they couldn't tell us apart.

"But the one person who could always tell the difference was our mother."

As children, the twins were often dressed in identical outfits

If you see the brothers on their own they look remarkably similar but when they are together it is almost uncanny.

'You can't say you're ugly'

Stephen says that confusion extends to them.

"Even when we were young, we'd look at photos of ourselves and we would have to look carefully to see which one it was.

"The other difficulty growing up was if you're having an argument with your sibling you can't say to your twin that they're ugly," he laughs.

Twin telepathy is well documented and, in their case, there have been countless examples.

"David was on a school trip in Year 10 and I was at home. I wasn't on that trip and it was the days before mobile phones.

"He phoned home the next morning and my mum said: 'How's it going?'

"He said: 'Really great, though it was really strange I was up all night with really bad stomach pains.' And Mum said: 'That's really interesting because your twin brother had his appendix removed at about 12 o'clock last night.'

"There's no explanation for that but even Mum was surprised at that one."

As schoolboys, the twins sometimes impersonated one another to fool their teachers

David remembers another occasion: "Stephen was married before I was and I was still living at home.

"At about 1 o'clock in the morning I sat bolt upright in bed awake and knew immediately there was something happening with Stephen.

"I remember walking down the corridor to my mother's room and I said: 'I think there's something up with Stephen.'

"Five minutes later the phone rang and Stephen's wife had gone into labour to give birth to their first child."

School pranks

That sibling connection came in handy when it came to school.

Stephen was great at maths and David was strong at English and they would often pull the wool over their teachers' eyes.

"For a period of time at Portadown College we would swap classes," David recalls.

"He would go to my maths class and I would go to his English class and we only stopped doing that because a maths teacher caught on.

"Even our classmates covered for us on those days when they knew what we were up to. But the maths teacher said to Stephen one day that he didn't talk enough - that's when he realised."

Even into adulthood, the twins sometimes still dressed alike

Stephen says while they carried out plenty of pranks at school, and were certainly a team, it could also be a burden.

"When David is worried about something I also worry and that goes right back.

"I remember at one prize day in our P7 year, I was determined to win the Footballer of the Year award and it turned out I didn't get it.

"I could hear someone sobbing behind me and realised it was David and he was more upset than I was because he knew how much I wanted to win that award."

There is another more unusual element to this particular twin relationship - the fact that one is instantly recognisable as a public figure.

Scoring free drinks

For Stephen this has its pros and cons.

"I was on holiday in Mallorca with a group of friends and we were sitting in a bar and I realised there was a pretty high-profile story coming out of Northern Ireland.

"They had Sky News on in the bar so I said to the barman: 'If I appear on that TV in the next five minutes will you cover this round of drinks?'

"The Spanish waiter thought it was all a joke and he had a laugh and, sure enough, five minutes later David appeared on the TV and he was stunned.

"He thought I was some sort of magician until I explained he was my twin, but he still paid for the round of drinks!"

The cons very much relate to social media. When it comes to trolling, Stephen is very protective of his brother and finds it harder to ignore.

"David probably handles it better than I do because I know the effort he puts in to maintain impartiality."

'Our blind and deaf sister could tell us apart'

They were both dealt a bitter blow with the death of their sister Ruth in September 2021. They leaned on each other for support at such a difficult time.

Stephen says paying tribute to Ruth alongside David at her funeral was very special, as she was a huge part of their lives.

David adds: "She was an inspirational person, she was both blind and deaf and communicated using sign language.

"By some strange means she knew the difference between Stephen and I when we were communicating with her and we would only have been signing on to her hands.

"I think in many ways we were able to grieve together when we lost her so suddenly."