Splitting Hairs

This month, Olly Mann gets to grips with a change to his signature hairdo

- By Olly Mann. Illustration by Daniel Mitchell

I ’M LOSING MY HAIR. I mention this not to garner your sympathy; don’t worry, this column will not be an exposition on how distressing it is that my body is succumbing to the ravages of time. It’s just a fact, and, honestly, I’m fine with it.

Don’t get me wrong: had this happened when I was 25, I would have jetted off to an Istanbul clinic with a wallet full of credit cards and a sackful of shoulder-shavings faster than you could say Elton. I would have had a baseball cap glued to my scalp, like Ron Howard. I would have hired a psychiatrist, put them on speed dial, and shed more tears than Gwyneth at the Oscars.

But at 40? I’m fine with it. I’m a married father of two, unburdened by maintaining a Tinder profile. I’m tall, and balding from the top, so everyone who is shorter than me (ie, most people) can’t even see my scalp. Most comfortingly, I cling to the knowledge I had good hair for the first 30-ish years of my life. Not stylistically, of course: the hairdos of my school portraits are half Boris Johnson, half Rose West. But hairdressers would always compliment me (I guess because there’s little else to chat about with a fidgety, football-hating boy?) on my great hair.

“Ooh, isn’t it thick?”, they’d coo, as they hacked through a vast swathe of voluminous curls, making no discernible difference to the aesthetics of my lion-like mane. “I’d kill to have hair like that!”.