Bloody beards...

There seems to be a beard revolution going on. You can’t turn on the televisioning box these days without seeing men with hugely hirsute jaw lines when only a few months ago their faces would have been as smooth as the proverbial baby’s bottom. Worse still, it seems that a lot of these ‘men’ are mere babies themselves and there is something not quite the full shilling about an apparently twelve year old boy with a huge hunk of hairiness around his mouth.

The TV ads, boy bands, movies, reality shows are full of these whiskered boymen. Maybe I should grow a big fuck off beard so that I can advertise perfume and cars and breast milk and everything else that only seems to be bought by men with hairy chops or their women who are obviously saving money on the weekly shop by not buying razors and shaving foam.

Of course there are men that look great with the full treatment: Orson Welles, W.G. Grace, Ernest Hemmingway, Captain Birdseye, Haddock, and all pirate captains, explorer types, and Victorian firemen with solid brass hoses. But it’s really for the older person, not the ‘only started shaving a few years ago’ boy brigade. They should stick to goatees and chin bars.

Boys with beards! Oh well, it could be worse – they could have full beards and tats.

What do you mean they do?

* Thanks to Mr Kevin Parrott for the fantastically rendered image of me with a magnificent full beaver. I think it makes me look a little like Orson Welles... Oloroso.