Men like Gordon Ramsay have no reason to fear the scalp. Accept your fate ? be bold, and be bald
At first, I ignored it. A couple of hairs appeared in the plughole while I was taking a shower, so what? Then more hair fell out. And a little more. My face was getting bigger; or, to put it another way, I was going bald. The long farewell to my follicles was beginning, and I was only 19.
It's a dilemma most balding men have to go through, but I encountered it earlier than most: should you try and cling on, or should you accept your fate? If we are to believe the tabloids, it's a dilemma being faced by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who has been photographed emerging from a Los Angeles clinic, with the Daily Mail reporting he had been "thickening his thatch with a �30,000 hair transplant". Whether or not he has actually undergone the procedure, I feel a bit sorry for men who feel the need to augment their dwindling locks.
When my own strands began to struggle, I went for the scorched-earth option and shaved the lot off. I had seen the damage that hairplugs could do when they went wrong ? I had a lecturer at university who looked like he'd been attacked with a rake ? I didn't fancy the idea of taking those hair replacement treatments, and a Bobby Charlton would have been ridiculous in the 1990s.
But there was something else. I began to notice something. Something about the shape of my head, those delicately curved surfaces of naked skin ? it looked good. Yes, I was a spamhead. A baldy. A chrome-dome. That platinum blond bowlcut of infant-school days and the dangly ponytail of my late teenage years were just memories, but I didn't mind at all, because the first time I looked in the mirror at my bare scalp it just felt right. I felt like I had come home.
Whether it was the slaphead that made me attractive, or the new-found confidence I gained from having freed my noggin from its troublesome fuzz, I'll never know ? but my romantic life began to pick up. Far from the myth of Samson's locks, it seemed that it was the hair that had been draining me of my strength. Going bald was a revelation; if only I'd known sooner.
It helps, of course, that being a baldy is not as much of a source of ridicule as it used to be. Men may feel under some societal pressure to have a full head of hair, and you still see the odd poor soul wandering around with a syrup, or a combover, or an elaborate range of hats that they keep on indoors. I feel like reaching out to those chaps and saying "Be proud. Be strong. Don't fear the scalp. Be bold, and be bald." After all, what makes someone like Homer Simpson a figure of fun is not that he's bald, but that he keeps those strands of hair stretched across his pate ? he's not ready to accept his fate just yet.
As a spamhead, there are plenty of role models ? it began with Yul Brynner and Telly Savalas and was carried on with Daniel Benzali in Murder One and Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction ? you could be bald and a tough guy. Not just that, but you can be funny (Harry Hill), a rock star (Billy Corgan) or a TV chef (Heston Blumenthal) with a shiny head, and no one bats an eyelid.
Take it from me ? being bald is the beginning, not the end. Be proud of your pate and go nude on top. It's a bit chilly in winter, but you'll grow to love it. Whatever you do, don't cling on and don't be vain; you can't hold back the tide. So here's my recipe for a happier life: clippers. Cut. Foam. Razor. Shave. Done. You'll never look back.
Neal Ardley CVs Economics Simon Barker Kevin Pietersen Julio Arca
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