Square Eyes.
That’s the nickname that Philipp’s long-suffering boyfriend Karl gives him.
Not, of course, because Philipp’s eyes really are square…
Indeed, if you look closely at the pics you’ll see that they are really quite normally shaped as well as being a fetching shade of deep blue.
No, the nickname came about because of the amount of time that cute young Philipp spends sitting in front of the television screen at their Berlin apartment.
TV programmes, DVDs, computer games – it doesn’t seem to make much difference. Sit Philipp down in front of that large Samsung flat screen and he’s not likely to move for the next few hours.
“I’ve completely given up cooking for him in the evenings”, says Karl.
“He won’t eat at the table – and, even if he eats with the plate balanced on his knees as he watches the TV, he usually ends up dropping most of the food down his shirt because he can’t take his eyes off the screen.”
As such, I guess that we’re pretty lucky that Karl (who you can see in a couple of the early pictures) managed to persuade Philipp to give up potential viewing time to pose for our pictures at all.
“Oh, but that wasn’t too difficult at all”, explains Karl.
“For a long time now Philipp’s been wanting to buy a Blu-Ray player and I told him straight out that the only way we’d be able to get the money to pay for one was if he did this modelling job for HMBoys.
“And that did the trick with no trouble at all.”
Philipp did, though, make one extra condition in return for his cooperation with the project.
“He insisted that I burn a copy of his photographs onto disc”, says a resigned sounding Karl.
“That way he’ll be able to shove the disc into the machine and, whenever he wants, see himself on that damned TV!”