After our 2021 Christmas pudding, in an attempt to improve our opinion of another wretched year, my family took it in turns to declare one thing that we could look back on with pride. There was applause for a double first at university, successful hockey trials, defeating cancer, surviving Covid, avoiding bankruptcy, becoming a dame—but a slightly baffled silence greeted 23-year-old Lola when she said: “I am proud that I have embraced my natural hair colour.” I thought it was a bit odd until I considered my own hair history.
As a child my hair was dead straight, and a colour defined as mousey. A fair summary of my personality. From my first home perm at 15, my hair has been tortured into efforts to create a persona for myself. I have tried Sexy Blonde, Wild Redhead, Dramatic Brunette, backcombed bouffant and geometric Vidal Sassoon bob, and found the most modern style—Just Got Out of Bed—very useful during lockdown.You name it, I have tried it. Now I just can’t be bothered, so I have let my hair reveal the truth: I am an old, white-haired woman. This is me. I am delighted that Lola has acquired self-knowledge in 23 years rather than 88.
I quite like being my white-headed self, now I’ve accepted that it renders me invisible to waiters and bartenders. This doesn’t happen to men. White hair gives them gravitas. I recently attended a wonderful talk organised by Prospect featuring Michael Heseltine. The young people in the audience were very impressed by his elder statesman behaviour and dignified hair. They were too young to remember that wild, redheaded Tarzan swinging the venerable mace around in the House of Commons. Did his hair contribute to his failure to reach the top office? Hair is important to politicians.Boris Johnson knows that.
I have twice caught Johnson surreptitiously ruffling up his blond locks before bouncing into view. It shows that he made a conscious decision that the electorate was bored with neatly coiffed vicar’s daughters and PR executives, so he would replace them with a tousled, devil-may-care joker. And he was right. He was very funny on Have I Got News for You, so we decided he was just the man to sort out the grave injustices in our country. His plans for a garden bridge over the Thames, a floating airport in the estuary and another bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland proved that he had the imagination to fulfil all his promises about Brexit, so we gave him a thumping majority to “get it done.”
In 1975, I appeared on Question Time with Margaret Thatcher. It was the year that she was appointed party leader. She arrived at the broadcast with a retinue of men who were drilling her about possible questions. Her hair was in a suburban, dingy-coloured, tight set, probably decided by her male groomers. They had already employed a voice coach to lower her voice. When she took over the reins herself, she first lightened and fluffed up her hair. She worked hard on her image, summing it up in a speech about Russia: “I stand before you tonight in my Red Star chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up and my fair hair gently waved, the Iron Lady of the western world.” She was a sort of fierce Marilyn Monroe. The picture of her in a tank with a billowing cream scarf and windswept hair was archetypal. When Liz Truss emulated the same pose wearing an army uniform, she just looked silly.
I quite like being my white-headed self, now I’ve accepted that it renders me invisible to waiters and bartenders
I don’t think the Queen bothers about her image. Her hats, outfits and hair have remained more or less the same for the whole of her life. In my old age, I am allowing myself to be apolitical—a plague on both their houses—so no lefty inclination obliges me to be a republican. I have loved the Queen ever since 1940, when with the bombs falling, she and Princess Margaret Rose spoke to us children on the radiotelling us to be brave and we would win the war. Some 80 years later, this Christmas my whole family, including my grandchildren, shed a furtive tear as this 95-year-old woman, now without her “strength and stay,” urged us to “look ahead with confidence.” She was wearing the same hairstyle. It has, apart from the colour, not changed a jot in all those years. It is a constant in our chaotic lives. Heaven forbid that anyone should give her a makeover. Or that she should decide, Boris-like, to ruffle up those lacquered curls and waves.
Would Johnson be a better prime minister if he combed his hair? I fear his crooked tie, grubby-looking shirt and ill-fitting trousers would still illustrate his unsuitability for the job as our nation’s leader. Crooked, grubby and ill fitted he would remain, even with tidy hair. I suspect he wears immaculate whites and a smart cap to play cricket at Chequers. In public he thinks we like his apparent lack of conformity. His judgment is yet again awry.
When my highly skilled specialist wears an old-fashioned immaculate white medical coat for appointments, he treats us patients with respect. When Johnson addressed a meeting of smartly dressed businessmen and women looking—as my mother would’ve said—as if he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards and having obviously not bothered to prepare a speech, it was alarming. After rambling incoherently about Peppa Pig, that endless pause when he lost his way in the speech and muttered “forgive me, forgive me” was chilling. He stood transfixed, as though he was staring into the abyss of his own inadequacy. It was probably the most truthful moment of his premiership.
The cheerful, relentlessly optimistic act doesn’t work anymore. Despite my new nonpartisan, apolitical attitude, Keir Starmer’s sober appearance, like that of the Queen, makes me feel safer. And come to think of it, in the shadow Cabinet Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper and Lisa Nandy have all got great hair
