Y ou would think that by now, aged 58, and as the author of a book called Vain Glorious (an appropriate title, it turns out, because barely anyone bought it), I would have grasped why my hair grows in the way it does. Yet, alas, at almost every level it continues to baffle me. Hair is, I’ve concluded, one of the most spiteful and unpredictable cells we have.
There’s very little logic to the way it behaves. Five years ago I had a hair transplant to move my hairline a tad nearer to where it had resided earlier in my life (without me realising, it had slowly receded and was beginning to resemble that of Elizabeth I). Happily, it was a success.
More recently it’s my body hair that’s been playing a game of hide and seek. An ongoing and inconvenient bout of prostate cancer has seen all sorts of comings and goings. Radiotherapy caused my pubic hair to fall out (not a look I recommend for a middle-aged bloke) and hormone therapy has led to nearly all my body hair disappearing too.
When I look in the mirror it’s like watching the animated Dancing Baby meme that did the rounds in the late 1990s..