Who says the rugs don't work?
Phil Hilton,
Getting a wig fitted - Former Nuts editor Phil Hilton gets given a full head of hair and roadtests it on the streets of London
Logically it doesn't make sense for men to worry about baldness - it's largely inevitable, entirely unremarkable and doesn't hurt. And strictly speaking, feeling insecure about losing your hair is in itself unmanly - a real man should deal with anything short of international armed conflict as part of life's big blokey punch on the upper arm.
But hair loss is serious. I discovered this at a very early age. I was, in a sense, brought up collectively - by my mum, my dad and my dad's big 1970s toupee. I've had a rich, loving and close relationship with my father. He's taught me many wonderful and useful things about life, the arts and buying car insurance. His wig taught me that being bald was bad and that talking about Daddy's pretend hair in restaurants was frowned upon. The wig and I never really hit it off - I wanted him to give it up and to face the world with an honest scalp. But now it feels like I should reconsider - it's time to make peace with my father's wigs.
In the last few months, aged 74, he's stopped wearing the faux hair. I'd like to say that after a long family walk in the country we jointly reached this decision and laughed about it over a glass of wine and a selection of fetching baseball caps. In fact, he lost it. I don't mean became furious and disenchanted with the hairpiece. I mean he mislaid it. Somewhere in his flat it's lurking, waiting to reclaim his head.
In my earliest memories he is pre-wig and sporting a long band of hair teased over his otherwise bald head. Then suddenly my father grew hair. Quite a lot of hair actually, curly, dark, sitting high and proud on his head and held on with thick strips of doubled-sided tape (I watched the process in the bathroom, fascinated).
I think my view of my dad's "piece" was distorted by the fact that I knew it was there. Wigs deceive the eye if you're not looking for them - like camouflaged animals. Once David Attenborough points out the lion in the long grass, he becomes all too obvious. To me my father had a massive lion on his head. The toupee seemed ludicrously visible - a colossal, attention-seeking fiasco. Nothing like hair; I saw it as a jaunty hat made of brown strands. I expected my dad to be followed around London by a mob of tourists taking snaps and shouting: "There's Phil Hilton's dad and his huge, unconvincing wig!"
I advised my father to give it up many times, told him that as he grew older the chances of him being blessed with hair like Liam Gallagher were slim, but year after year he held on to the toupee.
Now I've just turned 45, and although I couldn't be described as bald, I couldn't be described as having a full head of hair either. In fact, on reflection, I could probably be described as bald. Now it's time to honestly examine my own feelings about hair loss.
I crop my hair short, a reaction to my dad's approach. Ostensibly I'm too well-adjusted and modern to care about the increasingly large gaps between my weedy remaining strands. But if I had the chance to magically reverse the process? If I could instantly regrow my hair in a way that would be undetectable and that no one would ever discover (and if they did I could kill them painlessly and without the usual guilt, criminal proceedings or eternity in hell) - of course I would! In an instant, without hesitation! I want to look out from under a floppy fringe, I want to wake up with bed-head, I want a quiff like Elvis.
Losing my hair is my youth and vigour slipping away. It's like referring to the Kaiser Chiefs in public - part of you shrivels. It's my body laughing at my attempts to remain youthful: the gym-going, the bumbling wardrobe updates, the attempts at sexual intercourse (kidding!).
I can hear the chorus of politically correct readers rushing to reassure me that bald can be attractive too. But how many women return from a first date enthusing about running their fingers across a man's gorgeous scalp? ("God, I love the feel of sebaceous grease!") The most cursory of investigations reveals that, despite the protests, women prefer hair. I searched through Cosmopolitan magazine's 25 Sexiest Men imagining I'd hit a baldy by, say, number 12 but none of the sexiest men are sexy in a bald way. The current crop of lust objects includes the irritatingly bouffant George Clooney and Russell Brand, who seems practically made of hair.
So if I search my soul I can see why my dad, losing his hair in his 20s, adopted the hairpiece solution. He was young in the age of Cossack hairspray, when even real hair was blow-dried and shaped into a toupee-like helmet.
Already I sensed a kinship with the object I'd loathed all those years - I knew the next phase of my quest would be a difficult one, but my journey of self-discovery would inevitably lead me deep into the murky hair-loss therapy industry.
The various pate-covering technologies are estimated to be worth $3.5bn every year in the US alone. The oddity is that 40% of men under 35 will lose their hair, so we are spending to avoid an entirely normal and unremarkable state of affairs - like investing money to alleviate the problem of ears at the side of the head.
There are the drugs Minoxidil and Finasteride, which turn up in mega brands Rogaine and Propecia; there are the various surgical treatments; there are myriad herbal and natural methods of hair regrowth (including, excitingly, emu oil). Research group Mintel's latest findings indicate that the hair-loss industry is experiencing an upturn after years of decline. In 2007 sales of Rogaine suddenly jumped more than 25%, to $42m, after the introduction of an easy-to-apply mousse.
Yet surely the wig, the syrup, the source of some of Morecambe and Wise's weakest material must have suffered? Don't underestimate the hairpiece - toupees are back.
Barry Stevens, general secretary of the Trichological Society, says: "There does seem to have been a revival partly because they are much better than the old-fashioned rugs, which were really awful." He attributes the improvement in quality to a new mastery of the membrane that holds the strands of hair and mimics the scalp. A natural hairline begins with scalp showing through. The hair becomes more dense further up the head. The old wigs started too densely and gave themselves away, but now it is possible to create the illusion that the scalp is visible through the "hairline".
Along with this improvement in quality they have also rebranded - no longer called wigs, they are now "non-surgical hair replacements" or "hair systems". This terminology reeks of reassuring modernity and efficiency.
There are thousands of ways to find a wig, but only one hairpiece maker is mentioned on the Trichological Society website, and I know instantly that this is the man I need to help me in my attempt to learn how my father felt all those years.
Graham Wake of the London Hair Clinic meets me at his door. He is slim, likeable, and seems genuinely passionate about helping people concerned about hair loss. His Holborn office is completely unmarked from the street - it is a safe house for the receding. Oh, and he has a well-blessed scalp (no, I've no idea and he's not saying).
Wake explains how a bespoke, top-of-the-range "hair system" is made in 2009. Real human hair is woven strand by strand into a "lace", the membrane that mimics the scalp. A mould is taken of the client's head and the lace is cut and shaped to precisely fit their dome. The hair itself is taken from the heads of people in Eastern Europe and a wigful costs Wake between £60 and £200. The completed wig retails for around £650, but elsewhere you can pay as much as £2,000. The hair is attached to the base by an army of skilled wig-makers in the Far East.
Wake says that, along with the lace, there's been a big advance in adhesives - he uses hypo-allergenic medical glues invented for attaching prosthetic limbs to patients. These can bond to the scalp for up to six weeks, which even enables the wearer to swim in his wig. Finally the hairpiece is attached and cut by a trained stylist directly on the client's head. "This is psychologically so important. To sit there and see your hair being cut - you walk out feeling that it's your own."
Wake speaks with conviction about the damaging effects of early baldness: "Guys often come in depressed. Mums will come in with young sons. The men have often thought about it for a long time and researched it on the web. A lot of people come in through online forums, having read about the company." He talks convincingly about the transforming effect a "system" (Wake never says "wig") can have on a man whose self-belief has been crushed by the departure of his hair.
"Once they have it fitted, they have more confidence with the opposite sex, they make more effort with clothes and their appearance. A lot of them while still bald think: 'What's the point when I'm stuck with this hair situation?' It's a second life."
Hoping to find a toupee-wearer happy to talk about the rejuvenating effect of the hair system, I remember that my own father was once one of these anxious young men.
"I lost my hair in my 20s - it was early to lose it, and it knocked my confidence," he says. "I paid £100 for my first wig around 1969. At the time I was a manager in a factory full of women. I walked straight in and let them all see me at the same time - the comments were on the whole very positive. I felt more confident, more complete."
My father was unusual in coming out so boldly. Graham Wake has advised many clients about making the transition from his secret lair back into society. "Try and take a couple of weeks off work to get used to yourself. I tell people not to have a low, three-finger hairline; I ask them to let me recede it and thin it out for them. I advise them to try to go back to work looking as similar as possible to before the fitting. If they are asked about the hair directly, I recommend a white lie along the lines of 'I spent a lot of money having my hair done - I've had some extensions fitted'. I don't think people should say: 'I had a piece done.' As long as you don't admit you've had a hairpiece, people won't really know."
For me to truly understand my father and his hair, I realise in a moment of clarity that I too should have one of Wake's "special" haircuts.
I need to look into a mirror and see myself with a wig to truly understand why so many men come to rely on them. Wake promises that he can match the grey in my hair and come up with something pretty impressive. I'm haunted by images of myself running into colleagues outside the salon with a vast "Brian May" or staring at my alternative-hair self in the mirror weeping over every pointlessly bald moment of my life.
When the day for me to meet my "non-surgical hair replacement" finally arrives, I'm genuinely nervous - being a man, this manifests itself in a stream of terrible adolescent jokes. Resting on Wake's hand, the "hair system" looks like the harrowing part of one of those documentaries about the illegal sale of rare animal skins - it is a limp monkey/rodent pelt. Once on my head, however, even placed roughly in position, before it's cut or stuck on properly, it is no longer a dead marmoset but my hair. The moment takes my breath away - the hairline is realistically high as it would be in a man my age and he has deftly woven in grey to pick up my own fading colour. In the mirror I'm facing the person I would have been with a different set of genes - it entirely alters my character.
We settle on a posh central parting with a long fringe - basically a toff hairdo called "curtains". Having a big nose and virtually spherical face, the addition of hair transforms me from a talking potato to a flamboyant raffish type who knows how to smoke a cigar and has tried opium. I am Hugh Grant's uglier brother.
I need to test my powers, I need the world to meet Hair Phil. Although happily married, I want women to feel the magnetism of my head. I need to impose myself on London outside the confines of Wake's salon - I need a challenge for the hairpiece. It comes to me. I should pop next door and buy coffee.
To my surprise, no one looks at me twice or says: "Here's your cappuccino, fake hair man."
I even chat to a young woman while I'm there. She does not suggest we start a new life in Paris and to hell with this dirty city, but I feel she might have, given more time. I sit outside on the street wearing second-hand hair and it feels fantastic. You know that tickly feeling you get when your fringe flops into your eye and you have to flick it away? Well, I do!
Obviously my mind turns to my dad. Now, finally, I understand how he became so attached to his hairpiece. I call him and tell him excitedly about how realistic my hair system is and how astonishingly natural it looks. I feel it's a special moment between us - a new intimacy and understanding has emerged, and we are both wiser. I wait to hear how he responds to my epic emotional journey into baldness and the lessons I've learned. "So," he asks, "can you get me one of those wigs?"
• Phil Hilton is editorial director of ShortList magazine
