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Hairy decisions to make on ageing
The Germans want me to dye it black. My friend Ricardo, the
hairdresser from TV's reality show The Salon, wants to add
more highlights. My wife wants me to leave it alone to go
grey gracefully. And me? I'm so fed up with my hair that I
think I'll shave it all off.
It started with a silly pun. I was spending a week in front
of the cameras for Channel Five's fly-on-the-wall flop, Back
to Reality - a show I hated making so much that I walked off
the set.
I don't regret many things in life, but there have been times
this year when I wished whole-heartedly that I had never agreed
to tackle that series.
But I'm glad now that I did, for it gave me a merciful escape
- if I hadn't had a bellyful of Channel Five, I might have
ended up on The Farm with Stan Collymore, Rebecca Loos and
that wretched pig. (Just joking - my vegetarian principles
would have made it impossible to take part in any programme
that exploited animals.)
I can't remember now whether it was Ricardo or Major James
Hewitt, my closest allies in the Back to Reality house, who
joked that if I went blond I could call myself Uri Yeller.
We were all so bored that it seemed like a good idea at the
time. My hair has always been naturally coal black and bushy.
For decades I have encouraged the follicles to stay healthy
by stimulating the blood supply to my scalp - hanging upside-down
like a bat from a set of specially-made stirrups bolted to
the ceiling of my home gym.
This apparatus isn't just good for the hair: it gives my
back a good stretching as I dangle. It might look dangerous,
but there's only one real risk - my wife sometimes tiptoes
in to tickle me.
I thought I didn't look too bad as a blond. People kept stopping
me in the street to ask why I'd done it, and I always told
them: "Scientific research - I'm finding out if blonds
really do have more fun."
Ricardo kept dropping by our home to working on my styling.
"Nothing is so perfect, darling, that you can't improve
on it," he insists. He's become a good friend of our
family, although my daughter Nat pretends to be jealous that
he looks so good in an evening gown.
I'm letting a streak of grey show at the temples - I'll be
turning 60 in a couple of years, and I have a dread of growing
old like Ronald Reagan, with a head as black as boot polish
and twice as shiny.
There's a nightmarish image in my memory of Dirk Bogarde,
in Death In Venice, as the vain connoisseur whose hair dye
runs in the heat, striping his face and neck with brown rivulets.
But I'm in a business where the only deadly sin is to let
yourself look old. I meet starlets in their 20s who are rigid
with botox, terrified of letting a wrinkle show. And I see
women who were movie stars when I was in my teens, and they're
botoxed solid too, desperate to look as if they haven't aged
a day.
The result is hideous: am I the only guy who thinks Kylie
Minogue and Joan Collins look like twins who signed up on
a two-for-one deal at the embalmers?
The men are no better. Paul McCartney has picked a wince-making
tinge for his mop, but I suppose an ex-Beatle needs a full
thatch.
More unnerving is Macca's face: he looks like a waxwork that
was left too close to a radiator.
Tony Blair's barnet has an unwholesome sheen, but if he was
hoping to prolong his endless youth he shouldn't have made
such a drama of his recent heart op. It's ludicrous to blame
his taste for strong coffee: no one needs a defibrillator
after a Starbucks grande Americano.
Blair's heart problems make him look physically weak, and
modern politics, like ancient myths, demands superhuman fitness
from its heroes.
Professor JG Frazer, in his classic study of the tribal customs
which shaped civilisation, The Golden Bough, devoted a key
chapter to the worldwide custom of slaying kings when their
strength began to fail.
The mystic monarchs of Fire and Water in Cambodia, Fraser
wrote, were stabbed to death by priests when they fell ill.
In the Congo the Chitomé tribe believed the world would
crumble and perish if their king died naturally.
The tribal chief of Fazoql had to show himself beneath the
tree of justice every day - if he missed three days in a row
through illness, he was hanged with a noose barbed with razor
blades.
Surely no Democrats, not even Michael Moore, would want to
see President Bush deposed so brutally. But it's also true
that Dubya's reign has taken only one serious wobble - when
he choked on a pretzel and passed out.
The voters will forgive unlawful wars and economic insanity,
but they do expect their leader to remain conscious while
eating. (If you take a close interest in American politics,
you'll know that George W's father, the first President Bush,
lost his grip on the White House when food poisoning struck
him at a state dinner in Japan.)
This is not the Jewish way. We revere our elder statesmen.
I cannot think of any Israeli politician who has been bundled
off the stage for letting his wrinkles and white hairs show.
Ariel Sharon has been politicking since the 1960s, and we
regard that as testimony to his experience - you might hate
his opinions, but you can't accuse him of being a Johnny-Come-Lately.
In contrast, I can't think of a single American or British
politician who was big in the 1970s and is still a heavy hitter
now.
Jimmy Carter, for instance, is well-regarded around the world,
but in the US the former president is viewed as a doddering
old fool.
And I'm stuck between the two traditions - I'd love to grow
into the part of a Jewish elder, but I earn my bread in an
industry fixated on youth.
And it all comes to a head with my hair. So who should I
listen to?
There's a German TV crew requesting I paint it black so they
can dovetail archive footage with shots of me today.
There's Ricardo, with his bottles of Sunlight Streaks.
There's my wife, who is keen to see the real me.
The radical solution is required. The skinhead's Number One
cut. It's all coming off. Where's my razor?
Email
him at uri@urigeller.com
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