As chef Gordon Ramsay emerges from a hair transplant clinic, Iain Hollingshead offers some words of advice to the follicularly challenged
Christmas with Gordon Photo: Channel 4
Just when you thought couldn’t have any less respect for Gordon Ramsay, the embattled chef whose idea of family diplomacy is to write an open letter starting “Dear Mother-in-law”, he was photographed on Tuesday emerging from a £30,000-a-pop hair transplant clinic in Beverly Hills, California, wearing a natty bandanna that made him look more like Silvio Berlusconi than he might have wished.
“Gordon Barnet!” exclaimed one newspaper, which is probably a politer version of the retort uttered by the owner of the Foxtrot Oscar restaurant when he spotted the paparazzo.
Ramsay, 44, who still possesses a fuller range of blond locks than he does a vocabulary, might seem an unlikely candidate for a transplant operation. And yet a wave of vanity has swept the Glasgow-born chef since transferring to American television. Last year he was persuaded by Simon Cowell to inject Botox into his chin. Earlier this year he joked on Radio 1 that his “goolies” might get the same treatment. Now it is the turn of his poor follicles.
Of course, Ramsay is not alone. An estimated £2.3 billion is spent annually in America on hair loss treatments. Scores of British men in entertainment, from Cowell to Jude Law, are rumoured to have had their pates fiddled with. While John Cleese, Shane Warne, Graham Gooch, Duncan Bannatyne and James Nesbitt have all spoken openly about their transplants. “It’s changed my life,” says Nesbitt. “It’s horrible going bald. Anyone who says it isn’t is lying.”
Five years ago, aged 25, I would have agreed. The process starts with denial: the camera angle was unforgiving, the light bad, the hair in the shower someone else’s. During the summer you convince yourself that you are merely moulting in the heat, like the family dog. For the rest of the year you just have to make sure that mirrors never catch you unawares, your head constantly angled down, the forehead wrinkled to minimise its burgeoning surface area.
After a year or so of this nonsense you’re on to the anger stage – often manifesting itself in frenzied research to see if something can be done. The short answer is: no. While German researchers announced recently that they hope to grow human hairs from stem cells within a year (not the first time that baldies have felt the remaining hairs, on the back of their neck, thrill with unfulfilled excitement), for now we are left only with snake-oil merchants, invasive chemistry and unappealing surgery.
In numerous online forums angry young men – a quarter of men in their 20s show signs of male-pattern baldness – debate the merits of camouflage sprays (cheap and don’t work) over laser combs (expensive and don’t work).
More expensive still is Propecia, a daily pill that costs around £40 per month. It has the advantage of actually working in most cases. However, it can also cause impotence in a small number of cases – a fairly large disadvantage given the concerns that prompt many balding men to seek remedy in the first place. Regaine, a topical lotion, has also shown positive results, but you have to pay upwards of £25 per month and keep on using it for the rest of your life.
Unsurprisingly, then, hair transplants have become an increasingly popular prospect. The surgery has improved, thanks to a technique known as Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), which allows surgeons to take thousands of individual follicles from the thick thatch at the back of your head and replant them at the front.
The procedure takes around eight hours under local anaesthetic and is virtually undetectable if performed in the early stages of balding – which, presumably, informed Ramsay’s logic. However, it also tends to cost at least £7,000, you can’t expose the grafted area to sunlight for six months, or swim for a year, and you’ll still look pretty stupid if your hair continues to recede, creating a shiny, unhappy desert between the grafted spot at the front and the source of the graft at the back. And while it might briefly extend your American television career, everyone else will think you’re a complete wally.
All in all, then, you might as well get to the acceptance phase of the balding process as soon as possible. William Hague, Harry Hill, Heston Blumenthal – the B-Word isn’t half as bad as Ramsay probably thinks. The only thing the merry gang needs now is for Prince William, another thinning British blond, to go for a buzz cut before April.
In numerous online forums angry young men – a quarter of men in their 20s show signs of male-pattern baldness – debate the merits of camouflage sprays (cheap and don’t work) over laser combs (expensive and don’t work).
More expensive still is Propecia, a daily pill that costs around £40 per month. It has the advantage of actually working in most cases. However, it can also cause impotence in a small number of cases – a fairly large disadvantage given the concerns that prompt many balding men to seek remedy in the first place. Regaine, a topical lotion, has also shown positive results, but you have to pay upwards of £25 per month and keep on using it for the rest of your life.
Unsurprisingly, then, hair transplants have become an increasingly popular prospect. The surgery has improved, thanks to a technique known as Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), which allows surgeons to take thousands of individual follicles from the thick thatch at the back of your head and replant them at the front.
The procedure takes around eight hours under local anaesthetic and is virtually undetectable if performed in the early stages of balding – which, presumably, informed Ramsay’s logic. However, it also tends to cost at least £7,000, you can’t expose the grafted area to sunlight for six months, or swim for a year, and you’ll still look pretty stupid if your hair continues to recede, creating a shiny, unhappy desert between the grafted spot at the front and the source of the graft at the back. And while it might briefly extend your American television career, everyone else will think you’re a complete wally.
All in all, then, you might as well get to the acceptance phase of the balding process as soon as possible. William Hague, Harry Hill, Heston Blumenthal – the B-Word isn’t half as bad as Ramsay probably thinks. The only thing the merry gang needs now is for Prince William, another thinning British blond, to go for a buzz cut before April.
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