Identical twins Bill and John Bowdler, 82, from Birmingham, have never married and have spent their entire lives together, doing everything side by side. The pair, who are lifelong bachelors, still live together, dress alike, and even worked the same jobs until retirement.
Inseparable from Birth
John Bowdler said: 'We've always been inseparable, from birth, although I was born 20 minutes earlier than Bill so I was on my own for a little bit. We do literally everything together, and I couldn't imagine it any other way. We're that alike we can't even tell ourselves apart in old photographs.'
Their matching style began in childhood when their mother dressed them in identical outfits. More than 80 years later, the tradition continues. 'We dress in the same clothes. I'm normally up first so I go and pick something out and then Bill will go and match that. It all started with our mother dressing us both up the same,' John explained. 'We finish our sentences which just naturally happens. We find it happens all the time. Neither of us have ever married. We've got a really close relationship anyway, we didn't have the time to bother with the opposite sex.'
Same Careers, Same Retirement
The brothers left school in 1960 and both joined the same wholesale distribution business in Birmingham. 'When we were kids we were paper boys with the local news agent and we found out that one of the customers was a manager of the wholesaler distributor. They were wanting a junior to start. Both of us went up and they set us on as they liked that we were twins. We stayed there 31 years,' John recalled.
When the business later closed, the pair were unemployed for 14 weeks before both finding new roles as postmen. They once again ended up working alongside each other, covering neighbouring delivery routes for 17 years. 'When you start, they put you on different walks, but we ended up on adjacent walks. People used to see us both and get confused at how we were in two places at once,' Bill said.
The twins retired on the same day in 2009 and have remained inseparable ever since. The longest time they spent apart was when John spent two weeks recovering from appendicitis in hospital and another 12 weeks off work.
Shared Lifestyle and Health
Now retired, the pair enjoy watching Aston Villa play and eat the same meals every day. The only thing they disagree on is brown sauce: John cannot stand it, while Bill puts it on almost everything. 'We go on holiday together. We shop together. People will often mix us up, which can be quite a funny thing,' Bill shared. 'It's odd because we're not a family of twins. The only other twins our family had were a pair of girls from the 1870s, and that's it.'
Their similarities extend to their health. Both brothers discovered they needed cataract surgery in the same eye and had their operations just a month apart at Newmedica in Birmingham. 'We went to Specsavers, and they saw the cataract. They found it at the same time,' Bill explained. 'We've both had the right eye done. John had his done in April, mine in May. John is having his left eye done in July, then mine in September. We were wearing glasses anyway, but since the right eye had been done we had to book the left in. It could only happen to us that we both needed it doing.'
Active and Happy
The brothers believe their unusual lifestyle has kept them active and healthy. John said: 'We're 82 but we feel 70. There's people on our estate, our former school mates, and they're hobbling around or in wheelchairs. We're definitely one of the oldest sets of identical twins in the world. We have each other so we can keep each other fit. We just keep active. It keeps us ticking and alive.'
For Bill and John, spending their lives together has never felt unusual – it is simply the only way they know.
