Chunky curtained cubicles designed for one of two reasons:

• Officially, their purpose is the quick and efficient production of portrait photographs to validate various forms of identification.

• Practically, they provide much amusement when bundling in as many people as possible in order to gain comedic souvenirs of hazy nights out.

Of course, what you receive from the machine at the end of all the muddled proceedings involving subtly shaded curtains and twisty seats is guaranteed to look nothing like you whatsoever. It's easy to suspect that the photos are not actually of yourself at all, and are in fact identikit jigsaws of ex-offenders arranged by bored railway station attendants in the next room. However, the sad truth is that the general public are actually a lot uglier than they think they are.

The quite astonishing corruption of the face inherent in passport photos, as well as the fact that most people's passports were issued at the time the bearer wore a particularly embarrassing tangle of facial hair, gives rise to an interesting paradox: you are only likely to raise suspicions and be stopped at passport control if your own photo actually does resemble you in the slightest.