Reaching Out

One of the most interesting things about writing a blog is to see how many people read me around the globe. I see regular visitors from the BBC, UK newspapers, the American government, and even from my own home (I suspect that Judy logs on to see what I’m saying about her). It often leads me to wonder what interesting lives other people live. How did they get to where they are? Do they find Stephen Fry’s cape appealing? And do they understand what Bill Oddie and Nige get up to with owls?

Yet as many of you know, I also live in constant fear of litigation. Being a man of forthright opinions and a certain ebullient willingness to speak my mind when the moment is right (and, let’s face it, I yet to find a moment that isn’t right), I’m might occasionally say something that might be construed, in a certain light, by people of a certain limited viewpoint, as being somehow ‘wrong’. I know. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Yet causally glancing through my dwindling readership statistics, I often notice that members of various legal establishments are taking a great deal of interest in my blog. Today I'm living in fear of a complaint by the UK Society of Bearded Gentlemen, who might have taken unkindly to my depiction, yesterday, of all men with beards as megalomaniacs and war criminals.

Paranoia and I are old friends and I might just be misreading the signs. So, if you are currently working for a law firm and happen to be browsing my blog for nothing more innocent than a few harmless insights into the world of celebrity, please drop me a line to say that I’m in the clear with the UK Society of Bearded Gentlemen. Otherwise, I will take your silence to mean that the battle lines are being drawn and that Charles Darwin, David Bellamy, and Rolf Harris will be the leading witnesses for the prosecution.

The Evils That Come of Crusty White Beards

It came as a surprise to neither Judy nor I that Radovan Karadzic has been hiding himself away all these years behind a large crusty white beard. While the talk in the serious press has been of underground rooms and secret hovels in villages sympathetic to Karadzic’s cause, I, on the other hand, have been busy sending countless letters from Cactus TV to those in the intelligence community, warning them that white beards posed a threat to national security. Now here I am, years on and justified in my fears. Yet it still saddens me that MI6 could have wrapped up this whole matter a long time ago with just a bowl of soapy water and a razor.

My suspicions were first raised by Fidel Castro, that great epitome of everything that’s un-Madeley about the world. With the example of this Bearded Satan in Cuba, was it any surprise that Saddam Hussein chose to hole himself away behind a couple of inches of thick whisker fashioned into a living chin-mullet of evil? As Archibald Flunk, my old teacher in the art of disguise once told me: ‘only vagabonds and thieves hide themselves away behind a beard’. He told the same to Cher but she made a song out of it and has never enjoyed an inconspicuous moment since.

Now that people are coming around to my way of thinking, we need to ask serious questions of those people with the means to make things happen in the world of facial topiary. Who else might be hiding behind the crusty white beards we don’t know about? What might we find behind the beards that we have already identified as potential threats? My own theory is that we need to look again at Uncle Albert from ‘Only Fools and Horses’, Harbottle from the Will Hay films, Santa Claus, Jimmy Hill and Noel Edmonds. If I had to put my money on their being a war criminal hiding behind a beard, it’s to these beards that I’d go with a large pitch fork and a willingness to prod. And if we don’t find anything, we should then move on search Brian Blessed, Kenny Rogers, and Ginger Spice, because, I don’t know about you, but I still get that tingle of excitement at the very thought of there being an arch-criminal behind one of their beards.

I know that many of you will be wondering if I’m overstating my case but I’d go so far as to say that growing a beard is morally wrong. In the immortal words of Gillette, subsequently ruined by marketing people, ‘a beard is the first admission of guilt a man can make’. I, myself, have never once considered growing a beard. But, then, I have nothing to hide, being a good-living man who has never harmed a soul in his life, so long as you don’t count Shakin’ Stevens, and, let’s face it, who does?

Beards are as alien to our being as an extra set of earlobes. They are abnormal extravagances that only guilty men grow. I warn you now: ulterior motives were behind every man grooming a small shrubbery between his upper lip and chin. Grizzly Adams had a large beard because he lived out there in the woods with his bear. But did nobody ever wonder why he was hiding? And why he wanted to live with a nine hundred pounds of slobbering snot and teeth? And what about Rasputin or Blackbeard? The only two* exceptions to the general rule that all men with beards are evil are Jesus and Kris Kristofferson, who both, in their ways, wrote songs about beating the devil. They clearly weren’t evil. They were just in hiding from Satan, who, when you think about it, also has a beard. And as Professor Flunk always said, ‘the art of disguise is to blend in.’ Which is another reason why beards are unnatural, immoral, and unholy.

Given that 98% of the world’s population is cleanly shaved (and, to some of us, that means both top and tails) how is growing a beard meant to hide a man’s identity? It’s only going to encourage people to stare, pass comment, or give it a tug. The bigger the beard, the more explicitly do you announce that you have something to hide. A beard should always rouse the curiosity of good, common, descent folk who would do well to drag it to a stake where it would be tested with a trial by fire.

And speaking of the devil, as we were, that style of chin whisker is the worst beard of all. The devil groomed his beard, no doubt with one of those vile razors with an attachment on the handle. Ask yourself: how many blades does a pitchfork have? Now compare that with the Wilkinson Quattro Titanium. You see, there’s the devil’s work in the well groomed beard. TV advertisements for beard trimmers have kept me awake on many a night (although, lately, it has been the Ladyboys of Bangkok on the Manchester leg of their tour). There is a repellent vanity in all men that cut their beards to neat edges. While they appear to have something to hide, they are teasing us you by revealing just enough of their face to keep us guessing. This is like lumping pre-mediated evil on top of some of some unmotivated crime.

The beard says they’re guilty. Shaving it admits that they simply don’t care. The utter fiends!

* There is, of course, a third exception and that's Bill Oddie. But Bill is technically in hiding. His beard hides him from the birds, so it's really a natural form of camouflage and has no greater significance.