I have a fairly impressive selection of wigs. This is because I do showbizzy things from time to time. Wigs are a boon and a blessing. On one occasion, the wig was the only thing that saved me from an angry mob. On quieter days, they are so useful for disguising the fact that I have done something experimentally teenage with my hair that has not quite come off. I am astounded that the hair has not come off too, I have put everything on it but napalm.
Nature has been kind enough to give me the tonsorial equivalent of leylandii, or Japanese Knotweed. It is cheerfully resistant to all my vandalism. If I ever allowed the natural colour to surface, which is highly unlikely, it would now be grey. I was born, as I have mentioned, in possession of a thick black thatch similar to that sported by Lou Costello. As the nuns who surrounded my cradle in those first infant days backed away nervously, a Midwife Nun strode bravely forward to say " That will fall out,in a day or two". And it did, to be replaced by red fizzy curls. Apparently babies often arrive in wigs, the old wives tale being that this is what gives one heartburn when pregnant. Red hair was popularly supposed to be the Mark of Satan. Maybe I had put the wig on in the womb, to avoid being exposed on a hillside or similiar? Hair loomed in my childhood, the stuff of myth and legend. You ate crusts to make it wavy, it was washed in Durbac soap to ward off nits,and if it grew too long, it sapped your strength.The most mysterious hair-related thing was the incident affecting our local GPs, Doctors Ronald and Neville Riley, who were identical twins. An unusual phemonenon, even in Fazackerley,twin doctors. They resisted admirably the undoubted temptation to play identity-swopping tricks on their patients, being sober, kind, and unfailingly forbearing men. They put up with my childish antics; like the time when I painted red dots all over myself in an attempt to present with chickenpox, but had fallen prey to artistic over-enthusiasm and gone on to paint a large red eye around my navel, a symptom generally not typically seen in the diagnosis of a pox of any kind. One day Dr Neville awoke to find his hair curled around his pillow like a small vole. He had fallen victim to a sudden onset attack of alopecia, and was from that day forward, as bald as any coot you care to mention. But no-one in Fazackerley had any further trouble telling them apart.
I used to have hair I could sit on ( but don't we all,post-puberty?),like an Edwardian dirty postcard. It streamed down my back in thick, rippling auburn waves. This was less fun than you might think. For one thing, a strong wind and sticky lipgloss instantly transformed me into Cousin It. For another, it attracted strange people on the bus. I dozed off on a long coach journey back to University one Sunday evening, and awoke to find a large middle-aged lady combing it and singing hymns. Nasty girls would put chewing gum
in it. It got caught in doors and wound around people's coat buttons. New Year's Eve, 1979, I suddenly got bored with it. So I went out and bought two bottles of raw peroxide,and poured them into the bath. This didn't seem adequate, so I added some household bleach. Then I lowered my hair into the fizzing potion, and swished it about a bit, using the nailbrush to go round the edges.After a few minutes, I noticed that some of it seemed to be breaking off,and that my head was burning.. After an hour's rinsing, a whole bottle of conditioner,and some crying, I was left with an oddly glowing halo in radioactive orange and budgie yellow. But I had a party to go to, so I decided to brazen it out. I got my Mum's heated rollers out, and pinned the straw-textured mess up with them. And had a sherry and some Player's No.6, while it dried off. By the time I had finshed both the bottle and the packet, I had convinced myself that it would actually look rather Jean Harlow-esque to have a head of jaffa-coloured ringlets. And to smell like a recently-scrubbed public toilet. When the time came to unroll the rollers, they wouldn't unroll. I ended up cutting them out of my hair with nail scissors.Have you ever seen the original German illustration on the cover of "Struwelpetter"? Well,it looked like that. I remember the taxidriver bent double laughing at me as he dropped me off at the party.I don't remember very much at all after that. But I started the 80's resembling a High-viz badger. It took a while for the decade to catch up with my courageous early-adopting of big stupid hair.
Then there was my Swan Vesta period, where I was very thin and had a short red crop...after that, I went for a brushed back quiff with alarming spikes. There followed a series of increasingly dreadful styles, until I was adopted by a hairdresser who bawled at me if I so much as reached a fingertip up to it myself. Since then, and under his jurisdiction, I have behaved myself around scissors and dye. But the urge for a sudden change of look still emerges, every now and again.. Hence wigs. And of course my dear friends know I am a false hair source, so I am often asked if one of them can borrow from my wig library, for fancy dress or bamboozlement purposes.
So the wig that saved my life, or at least spared me the attentions of a drunken and dissatisfied audience..I was putting on a cabaret show for New Year's Eve. The bill was a stunner, the tickets were sold, and I was compering, dressed as Mummy Christmas, in a white-blonde Debbie Harry bobbed wig. And then gremlins struck. The sound system decided to expire. The management consisted of a fretful young woman who didn't really want us there anyway, and couldn't have cared less.She told us that she "Was Food", and I started to agree. For sharks, perhaps? To cut a long and painful tale short, these punters had paid handsomely for a sparkling cabaret.What they got was several attractively presented and no doubt fascinating acts, miming and squeaking, and then yelling until their throats were raw, all unheard.
I observed some very hostile body language. As a responsible and mature professional, I did the only possible thing.I whipped my wig off, put my specs on, hid under a large coat, and legged it . Fortunately some friends were driving through Liverpool trying to find a pub that didn't shut firmly at 9pm, and I hurled myself gratefully into the get-away vehicle.
By 3am on New Year's Day, I was finding it funny, and everyone else was trying on my wig, first checking that no-one from Oxton had been in the audience and had tracked us home.
So let's hear it for wigs. And toupes, too.After all, once you have reproduced, Nature doesn't give a stuff if you are lynched by a mob, but synthetic hair will save you every time.
Nature has been kind enough to give me the tonsorial equivalent of leylandii, or Japanese Knotweed. It is cheerfully resistant to all my vandalism. If I ever allowed the natural colour to surface, which is highly unlikely, it would now be grey. I was born, as I have mentioned, in possession of a thick black thatch similar to that sported by Lou Costello. As the nuns who surrounded my cradle in those first infant days backed away nervously, a Midwife Nun strode bravely forward to say " That will fall out,in a day or two". And it did, to be replaced by red fizzy curls. Apparently babies often arrive in wigs, the old wives tale being that this is what gives one heartburn when pregnant. Red hair was popularly supposed to be the Mark of Satan. Maybe I had put the wig on in the womb, to avoid being exposed on a hillside or similiar? Hair loomed in my childhood, the stuff of myth and legend. You ate crusts to make it wavy, it was washed in Durbac soap to ward off nits,and if it grew too long, it sapped your strength.The most mysterious hair-related thing was the incident affecting our local GPs, Doctors Ronald and Neville Riley, who were identical twins. An unusual phemonenon, even in Fazackerley,twin doctors. They resisted admirably the undoubted temptation to play identity-swopping tricks on their patients, being sober, kind, and unfailingly forbearing men. They put up with my childish antics; like the time when I painted red dots all over myself in an attempt to present with chickenpox, but had fallen prey to artistic over-enthusiasm and gone on to paint a large red eye around my navel, a symptom generally not typically seen in the diagnosis of a pox of any kind. One day Dr Neville awoke to find his hair curled around his pillow like a small vole. He had fallen victim to a sudden onset attack of alopecia, and was from that day forward, as bald as any coot you care to mention. But no-one in Fazackerley had any further trouble telling them apart.
I used to have hair I could sit on ( but don't we all,post-puberty?),like an Edwardian dirty postcard. It streamed down my back in thick, rippling auburn waves. This was less fun than you might think. For one thing, a strong wind and sticky lipgloss instantly transformed me into Cousin It. For another, it attracted strange people on the bus. I dozed off on a long coach journey back to University one Sunday evening, and awoke to find a large middle-aged lady combing it and singing hymns. Nasty girls would put chewing gum
in it. It got caught in doors and wound around people's coat buttons. New Year's Eve, 1979, I suddenly got bored with it. So I went out and bought two bottles of raw peroxide,and poured them into the bath. This didn't seem adequate, so I added some household bleach. Then I lowered my hair into the fizzing potion, and swished it about a bit, using the nailbrush to go round the edges.After a few minutes, I noticed that some of it seemed to be breaking off,and that my head was burning.. After an hour's rinsing, a whole bottle of conditioner,and some crying, I was left with an oddly glowing halo in radioactive orange and budgie yellow. But I had a party to go to, so I decided to brazen it out. I got my Mum's heated rollers out, and pinned the straw-textured mess up with them. And had a sherry and some Player's No.6, while it dried off. By the time I had finshed both the bottle and the packet, I had convinced myself that it would actually look rather Jean Harlow-esque to have a head of jaffa-coloured ringlets. And to smell like a recently-scrubbed public toilet. When the time came to unroll the rollers, they wouldn't unroll. I ended up cutting them out of my hair with nail scissors.Have you ever seen the original German illustration on the cover of "Struwelpetter"? Well,it looked like that. I remember the taxidriver bent double laughing at me as he dropped me off at the party.I don't remember very much at all after that. But I started the 80's resembling a High-viz badger. It took a while for the decade to catch up with my courageous early-adopting of big stupid hair.
Then there was my Swan Vesta period, where I was very thin and had a short red crop...after that, I went for a brushed back quiff with alarming spikes. There followed a series of increasingly dreadful styles, until I was adopted by a hairdresser who bawled at me if I so much as reached a fingertip up to it myself. Since then, and under his jurisdiction, I have behaved myself around scissors and dye. But the urge for a sudden change of look still emerges, every now and again.. Hence wigs. And of course my dear friends know I am a false hair source, so I am often asked if one of them can borrow from my wig library, for fancy dress or bamboozlement purposes.
So the wig that saved my life, or at least spared me the attentions of a drunken and dissatisfied audience..I was putting on a cabaret show for New Year's Eve. The bill was a stunner, the tickets were sold, and I was compering, dressed as Mummy Christmas, in a white-blonde Debbie Harry bobbed wig. And then gremlins struck. The sound system decided to expire. The management consisted of a fretful young woman who didn't really want us there anyway, and couldn't have cared less.She told us that she "Was Food", and I started to agree. For sharks, perhaps? To cut a long and painful tale short, these punters had paid handsomely for a sparkling cabaret.What they got was several attractively presented and no doubt fascinating acts, miming and squeaking, and then yelling until their throats were raw, all unheard.
I observed some very hostile body language. As a responsible and mature professional, I did the only possible thing.I whipped my wig off, put my specs on, hid under a large coat, and legged it . Fortunately some friends were driving through Liverpool trying to find a pub that didn't shut firmly at 9pm, and I hurled myself gratefully into the get-away vehicle.
By 3am on New Year's Day, I was finding it funny, and everyone else was trying on my wig, first checking that no-one from Oxton had been in the audience and had tracked us home.
So let's hear it for wigs. And toupes, too.After all, once you have reproduced, Nature doesn't give a stuff if you are lynched by a mob, but synthetic hair will save you every time.
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