This week, another miracle cure has been announced for baldness, and an increasingly large section of the population will have sat up and paid attention – in a vain hope that this time it really will happen.
I’m 47. I sometimes find it hard to remember my age. Yet, when it comes to remembering those glorious days of when I was the proud owner of long silken locks, the memory is as strong as ever.
During the 1980s – a golden time for both music and my hair – I dyed it blonde with a cheap and cheerful product that produced remarkable results. Glorious sunkissed locks were mine. I remember my mother warning me that it may end in tears, but little did I heed her wise words. I don’t know if it really contributed to my eventual hair loss, but the fact that I still wonder if it was my fault illustrates the importance I place on my appearance.
The first time I really noticed that there was more scalp than hair was when I caught a glimpse of the back on my head on television. I was having a ball playing the policeman in a children’s TV show called Brum, and like so many vain actors, I would happily watch myself back on screen while maintaining a pretence that seeing myself perform was a challenging task. As a policeman I wore a hat, and in this scene a runaway horse had dislodged it. Amazingly, I saw the back of a bald man’s head!
Surveys often claim that many women are attracted to smooth-topped men, but they don’t seem to account for the fact that my hair is something I miss terribly. I still sometimes flick my fringe out of my eyes, even though it disappeared down the plughole over 20 years ago. I don’t want to recapture those heady days of feeling the wind in my hair for anyone other than me.
It’s true that losing my hair has made no difference to my romantic entanglements and how they pan out, but it still seems different when I look in the mirror. I can go through my days not thinking about my baldness – until I see my reflection or a shadow on a pavement, and then I do feel a real sense that something is missing. I remember seeing an episode of the US sitcom 30 Rock where the character Pete (who has a similar level of follicular challenge to myself) wears a full head of wigged hair. He looked amazing and I could never again see him in the same way.
I am happy to admit that I have considered the idea of having a hair transplant. Seeing James Nesbitt’s hair transplant and the remarkable transformation that he undertook, I spent a great deal of time looking into what it would cost for me to undergo the same. It is far too expensive for me to seriously consider – and perhaps that means I have come to terms with baldness.
Seeing yet another story about a possible miracle cure, I’m pondering whether that fringe flip could ever return – but this time I would steer clear of the home-dye hair disaster. If I had a pound for every woman who had said “you look great as you are, I don’t mind a bald head at all”, then I could afford to restore my flowing locks. With my acting years behind me, I am now a hypnotherapist. I know about the power of the mind and how it can bring about great change. Sadly, there’s still no way I can hypnotise my hair back.
