Actor Michael Sheen looks a bit like a lot of people and sooner or later usually ends up playing them. It has already happened with Tony Blair, the young Brian Clough and David Frost, and it's surely only a matter of time before it happens with Tony Hayward.

The BP chief executive announced his resignation on Tuesday, paving the way for a moving but ultimately unsympathetic Hollywood biopic. Opportunistic scriptwriters have probably already set to work on Deepwater Shark: the Tony Hayward Story. With Sheen such a shoo-in for the lead, producers will now be busily searching for an actor who looks like 2,500 square miles of spilt crude oil.