Coiffure calamity

I am a mar­tyr to Bad Hair Days. In the past couple of years, I’ve dis­covered that the only way to stop such days occur­ring is to get my hair cut very short. This, at least, does pre­vent those awful moments when I look in the mir­ror in the morn­ing and dis­cover that my hair has formed itself into bizarre shapes that defy grav­ity and refuse to be styled by even the most vig­or­ous attack of comb­ing. How­ever, the reg­u­lar appoint­ment at the hairdresser to get a pretty drastic no.2 crop has simply revealed, in turn, that I’ve got a funny-shaped head. So it’s a dilemma — do I keep my hair slightly longer and risk the liv­ing night­mare of the Bad Hair Day, or do I reveal the pecu­liar shape of my head to the entire world? Decisions, decisions.

As it turns out, I’ve recently been fight­ing shy of the hairdresser’s all-over clip­per attack, and as my hair has grown a little longer I’ve dis­covered some­thing that puts every Bad Hair Day I’ve ever suffered in the shade. The dreaded sign of age­ing has arrived.

I’m going grey.

Before you accuse me of being entirely vain — which I’m not, hon­estly — I should add that I think I’ve prob­ably been get­ting grey flecks for a while, but that such tell-tale signs have been safely hid­den in difficult-to-see areas or snipped away before they became vis­ible. Look­ing at the men in my fam­ily line, I think I can safely say that I will never lose my hair — my mater­nal grand­father, in par­tic­u­lar, proudly main­tained Richard Har­ris style flow­ing locks into his early 80s. How­ever, the down­side of this fam­ily lin­eage is that I will prob­ably go grey rel­at­ively early, and that the res­ult­ing shade will be dull and unin­spir­ing — as if someone has poured the con­tents of an ash­tray over my head — rather than smooth and sil­very (see ‘silver-haired mon­goose’ Michael Par­kin­son or Sean Con­nery for inspiration).

Even so, I wouldn’t be averse to a little grey­ing at the sides, giv­ing me a cer­tain dis­tin­guished appear­ance. That’s not the prob­lem. No, the prob­lem with my few grey hairs is where they are appear­ing. At this stage, it’s prob­ably easier if I show you a couple of grainy images:

     

If you’re of a cer­tain age, you’ll recog­nise the gen­tle­man with a twinkle in his eye. Yes, it’s Dickie Dav­ies, gen­ial but ever so slightly scary host of World of Sport, a pro­gramme that will forever be syn­onym­ous with crap Sat­urday after­noon tele­vi­sion of the 1970s and early 1980s, back in the days when Brit­ish TV had only three chan­nels. While Grand­stand (hos­ted by Frank Bough in his leather chaps and sus­pend­ers) may have had the pick of the A-list sport­ing events, World of Sport was left with the dregs — wrest­ling and speed­way. And wrest­ling. Plus a little more wrest­ling for good meas­ure. (These days, of course, people who know about sport tell me that the BBC hold the rights to show noth­ing more than Cham­pi­on­ship Curl­ing and Pro-Celebrity Tiddly­winks, whilst ITV and Sky have bought everything else. How times change).

Enough about sport, though. It’s Dickie’s hair that I’m inter­ested in. Look at it. Now look at it again. You see what I’m talk­ing about, don’t you? In fact, admit it — you can’t take your eyes off it, can you? It’s that greyish-white flash of hair right at the front, which either screams “Skunk!” or sug­gests that some­body has unfor­tu­nately dribbled cus­tard on his head. And that, dear read­ers, is exactly where my grey hairs are appear­ing too.

Presently, my dis­tinct­ive grey hairs num­ber only a few, and they’re prob­ably vis­ible to no one else but me (even then I have to nar­row my eyes to see them). But my worst fear, the fear that roots me to the ground each morn­ing as I stand in front of the mir­ror, is that in a few years I might have my very own unmis­take­able Dickie Dav­ies’ Wisp. Oh, the shame.

I may start watch­ing those TV advert­ise­ments for Just For Men shampoo-in hair col­our with a new sense of interest.