No, you’re not seeing double. There are two Purplemen in our picture.
In fact only the one on the right is the real Purpleman. The one in the middle is Michael Lodge, who went purple for a very special reason.
Michael, 30, who is originally from Essex but now lives in Welton, East Yorkshire, works in a school in Goole.
He wanted to do something special to propose to his girlfriend Claire Fletcher. So he asked if he could pose as Purpleman to pop the question – and Purpleman agreed.
They invited YorkMix along with our cameras to capture the whole thing.
Things didn’t go perfectly to plan. The subterfuge spun to Claire was she would meet Michael outside Bettys on Stonegate.
But first Claire went to the St Helen’s Square branch of the tearooms. And when she arrived at the Stonegate café she went inside.
Bettys staff, tipped off about the proposal, told Claire that there was a message that she should meet Michael outside the jewellery shop next door.
Puzzled, Claire looks for Michael in vain – until Purpleman walks towards her and she realises it’s him!
Michael, who admitted he was “very nervous” before the proposal, was delighted to hear Claire say yes – after laughing at his outlandish get-up.
But she didn’t spot him until the last moment…
“She looked right at me,” Michael said afterwards. “She stared at me, smiled at me and carried on walking.”
“I did,” Claire said. “I smiled because I thought, ‘that’s that funny guy again’!
“You don’t expect your boyfriend to be dressed up like that, do you?”
The real Purpleman said this was a one-off, never to be repeated. He is going to be at Michael and Claire’s wedding on his purple bike.
Purpleman said: