POSTERS for divorce photographers, soul donors and missing match boxes have all appeared in shop windows across Oxfordshire over the last few months.

And they have one thing in common – they are hoax advertisements by artist Preston Likely.

The 42-year-old from Littlemore hit the headlines in October 2010 after putting his ‘identity’ – including a passport, birth certificate and other documents – up for sale.

Mr Likely was so overwhelmed by the response to the advert that he decided to explore the concept further, putting around 100 fictitious advertisements up in shop windows.

Now he has printed a selection of the adverts in a book – Amuse Agents – with some of the responses he received.

He said: “I thought if people will believe I’m selling my identity, what will they believe? I wanted to push the boundary and make them believable but not believable.”

An advert placed in a newsagents in North Parade, Oxford, which offered a 1967 Mini Cooper in exchange for a kitchen appliance received the largest number of responses, while another in Bridge Stores, Meadow Lane, Oxford, which read: “I’m looking for a wife. I can offer you the world! Say Yes” also received five or six emails.

Mr Likely said: “Some of them were pretty extreme.

“I didn’t expect any responses because I thought they were all so ridiculous and unbelievable. They were meant to be extremely silly and humorous and a bit absurd.”

The artist, who also works in a Didcot antiques shop and on a fruit-picking farm, said he did genuinely intend to sell an identity – but it was the fictitious identity of Preston Likely with made-up documents to accompany it.

Offers ranged from the small to the very large – the highest offer being £12,000 from a buyer in Italy. But in the end Mr Likely sold his documents for 99p on eBay in March last year.

He refused to give his real name but said he had been going by the pseudonym Preston Likely for several years in his capacity as an artist.

Mr Likely said he did not feel bad about the people who had been taken in by his adverts, and said all those whose responses featured – anonymously – in the book had subsequently been told what he was doing and agreed to be part of the project.

Mr Likely said his favourite advert was a reward for finding a box of matches dropped in Oxford High Street – in 1974.

It got a response from someone who suggested the council would be likely to have swept the street since then but wishing him good luck in finding it.

The book is on sale for £7.99 at major booksellers.