On a Saturday, while my mum was working at the local Wimpy, my auntie’s boyfriend would take me to watch Grimsby Town. After one game, I bolted through the door to tell my mum that I’d learned some new songs. There was “Who’s the wanker in the black?” to the referee, and “Shut up baldy” to the opposing team’s manager. My mum explained the referee was probably doing his best and that the manager couldn’t help being bald.
Twenty-five years later and I was sitting in hair and makeup on the set of Soccer AM while the makeup artist covered up the bags under my eyes. I’d got home at 2am after doing a comedy gig in Manchester and then got up again at 6am. After touching up my face, she reached for a pot and started sprinkling black powder generously on my hair. “It’s for the cameras,” she said, “so the lights don’t bounce off your bald patches.” It felt as if I’d been heckled, but had no comeback prepared. My stomach dropped. It was the first time that I’d been described as “bald”.
I was aware my hair had been thinning for the past three or four years, but I’d thought I was getting away with it. I’d comb my hair left to right to conceal my scalp and then use the “hair island” at the front of my head to try to camouflage the aforementioned comb-over. It was very much like using a large coat to cover two people sitting on each other’s shoulders to get into a club. I’d heavily edit photos to make sure it looked as if I had a full barnet. But as I got out of that makeup chair and headed to the studio, I found myself discreetly looking at every reflection. Even with the added sprinkles, I felt far less confident than when I’d arrived. I realised that the truth was out there. I was a balding man and I probably needed to do something about it. First, though, I needed to chat about my standup tour live on TV. In that TV studio, I felt not just less confident but, I realised, less of a man.
I didn’t have anyone to talk to about going bald. None of my friends or family members were bald, or even seemingly thinning. There were some older comics I gigged with who had clearly been bald for a while, but I didn’t think I could just ask about their hair loss. Why would I ask a colleague about his loss of masculinity before he performed to a room full of hen parties on a rowdy Saturday night in Birmingham?
It seemed as though my body was letting me down by not being able to keep hold of my hair. We’re told the story of Samson at school – how he lost his hair and then his strength. Well, now it was my turn. I felt I was becoming weaker as each follicle left my head, as if I became less respected by people the thinner my hair got. Bald people are often pitied or vilified. They’re usually the bad guys in films. I can’t remember a single bald contestant on Love Island, and bald people are often the first people to get picked on in a comedy club. Their body has “failed them” by not being able to keep their hair and now they’re going to pay the price for it. Who came up with this mad old playbook? Telling us that hair is a measure of success and prosperity and anything other than a full head of hair means something’s not quite right. Whoever it was had got us good. It was to my surprise that I discovered male pattern baldness is actually a result of too much testosterone. Turns out I’m too much of a man. Didn’t matter.
In comedy, you spend years trying to hone your USP, and my “character” and “voice” had always included the fact that I had hair. I was fat and I made jokes about that. I didn’t want to be fat and bald. I would scour the internet searching for “miracle cures”, which resulted in spending hundreds of pounds on various potions and lotions. I imported garlic shampoo from Turkey and tried various caffeine shampoos in car-oil shaped bottles. I used products for horses – actual horses, because I saw a thread on a hair loss forum from a user who said they had applied their horse’s shampoo “by mistake” and now they had a ponytail. I necked biotin tablets on a daily basis. I gulped vitamin D spray. Before I went to bed, I applied various foams to my scalp that claim to stop hereditary hair loss in the hope I’d wake up with hair like peak David Beckham, not Larry David.
Not only were these solutions not working, but my hair was visibly worse. So, one day before an audition I headed to Boots and bought some of the makeup artist’s magic black sprinkles (keratin fibres), then headed to Soho Theatre to use their toilets and apply my new best mates. I must have been in the cubicle for some time as a member of staff came and knocked on the cubicle door and asked if I was taking drugs. “No, sorry, just taking some medication, be out in a second,” was my excuse. I was more embarrassed about sprinkling black powder on my hair than snorting cocaine at 11am, but this was my new life.
I’d increase the usage as the bald patches expanded, spraying them in place using industrial strength hairspray, then praying it didn’t rain. I couldn’t go swimming, knowing that, like a gremlin, as soon as I hit the water all hell would break loose. Dating was a minefield, too. I’d been on a number of dates with one lady who I quite liked and obviously I hadn’t told her I had the male equivalent of a Wonderbra in my hair. On the day of the date, I popped into John Lewis and bought some dark blue pillow cases, so that if my sprinkles came off during the night she’d not see them when we woke up. I then woke up extra early to head to the bathroom to style my hair in place again. My work suffered; I was less confident in acting auditions, paranoid they’d be looking at my hair. When doing standup, I was like a coiled spring – just waiting for someone to heckle me about going bald. I had about 10 comebacks at the ready. “Yeah, well, actually mate, every time I sleep with your mum I get my tweezers out and pluck a single hair from my head.” It was no way to work.
After my 40th birthday, I decided I was tired of both covering up my baldness and the daily logistics that came with it, having to wake up an extra 20 minutes each day to factor in my sprinkling routine. I just wanted to feel confident in my appearance. I’m friends with quite a lot of footballers thanks to my days as co-host on Soccer AM and I noticed a few of them had clearly been for hair transplants as soon as the most recent season finished. They’d post a “close friend’s” story of them with a newly shaved head. I reached out to a couple I considered friends and politely asked if they’d had a transplant, and to my surprise they were all so forthcoming, offering advice on clinics, aftercare, how to deal with swelling, what travel pillow is best for when you’re sleeping upright for days on end. I trawled the internet, examining Trustpilot reviews as if they were a plumber coming to fit a new boiler. I’d weigh up the pros and cons of going to Turkey versus a clinic on home soil. In the end, I decided to go to a place in London that two friends had gone to and by all accounts had a very pleasant experience. Plus, it was only a 12-minute taxi ride away.
The clinic felt more like a five-star hotel where I’d won a free stay. There was a wide carpeted staircase and cast-iron bannisters, and stained glass windows blasting colour on to the tiled floor. At no point in my life did I ever think, as a working-class lad from Grimsby, I’d be going to a clinic on Harley Street to have a cosmetic procedure. I had always just assumed that was for a “certain type” of person. It’s where the royals go for medical treatments, and the rich and famous for nose jobs. I’ve been thinking lots about my various midlife crises, or “renaissances” as I’m calling them. Who is the type of person who has a cosmetic treatment done? Do we still stereotype them? Why are they doing it? Having done a fair amount of asking (mainly female) friends about their procedures, it’s often the case that they’re simply trying to make themselves feel “happier”.
I think most people just want to feel normal. For years, I’d wake up and look at my balding head and quite honestly, I’d feel awful. I’d start the day sad and I’d have to work on myself to get out of that lull. Like my friends who have had lip filler, or a breast reduction, I too wanted to wake up happy. But is it really to make yourself happier? Or is to make yourself happier knowing that you’re not going to get judged in the street, that you’re not going to get heckled because of your shiny head, that you’re not just going to get auditions for wrong ’uns in TV shows. What even is “normal”? If there was nobody to see (or judge) my thinning hair, would I still be sad? I don’t know. We live in this world where irrational beauty standards are the norm and we either accept it or suffer the consequences. We must have luscious hair on our heads, but not on our shoulders and the hair downstairs must be “scaped” – and that’s just for men. I’m clearly a victim of wanting to be accepted and I hope you accept that. I’m not alone in this forest and people can see my hair falling, and they can hear me crying. So, off to I go to W1.
The day itself was emotional. I’ll think back on it fondly because it felt so empowering, as if I was doing a reverse Samson and getting my strength back. For those unfamiliar with a FUE hair transplant, essentially, it involves removing healthy hair follicles individually from the “donor site”, which then leaves the back of your head looking like a strawberry in both colour and texture. They then re-implant those follicles into the thinner areas, in my case the front of my hairline all the way back to the crown. Mine was undertaken by an actual brain surgeon (apparently there’s more money in hair than brains), while I was sat upright watching a middle-aged Australian lady breakdance at the Olympics, wondering really how strong that Valium was. While it might seem quite invasive, the only thing that actually hurt was the anaesthetic injections. Sweet lord, they were horrific. Imagine someone injecting a headache into your scalp, but that headache is also made of concrete. My testicles are retracting even as I’m typing this. Anaesthetic injections: they’re really not nice.
In total, I had 3,052 grafts taken. I was in at 9am and out by 5pm, with an hour for lunch. This was a classy clinic in central London that I’d paid good money for and so I was expecting quite a lavish afternoon tea, but what I got was a ham and mayo sandwich from Wenzel’s the Bakers. The thick white bread felt like being a kid again, like getting a hug from my mum. I was wrapped up in its familiar embrace. I almost cried as I finished my last bite. That Valium really was doing its thing.
When they finish, they do the big reveal. It’s basically the same as when you’re at the hairdresser’s and they show you your head in the mirror, except that you’ve just spent £6,000. I saw a hairline at the front of my head for the first time in years. Sure, it was covered in blood, but it was there. I eyed every millimetre of it, following it intently as though it were a river on a map. I got teary at the prospect of having hair again, at not having to worry about going out in the wind, looking forward to diving into the sea and not being ashamed of what I’d look like coming up. I couldn’t wait to dispose of my remaining fibres as though I was dispensing of a relative’s ashes.
It was going to take time to get to that point – there was a very regimented aftercare procedure; sleeping upright for five nights, spraying your hair every half hour with saline, making sure nothing goes anywhere near your head for 14 days, no sexual acts for 10 days, the list goes on. But it was all part of my renaissance and I was excited. I took about 100 photos of my head in the cab on the way back and I didn’t edit a single one. I’d been reborn.
I’m now in my “ugly duckling” phase where the hair has started to shed and my head is patchy – a process we’re told to trust, as over the next six months I should start to see the results. I’m not sure what’s around the corner, both physically and mentally, but I’ve retired those heckle comebacks for the time being. I recognise myself a bit more now, in the mirror and also within my actual self, not just because of the hairline. It’s been the biggest journey of self discovery I’ve ever taken. I won’t be singing any songs abusing bald football managers anytime soon, but I will give the gaffer the name of the clinic I went to and tell him my DMs are open.
Lloyd Griffith stars in Return to Paradise which airs later in November on BBC One
