It was a balmy summer night in the late 1950s when I walked into a hotel in Bundoran with a couple of friends. A little cabaret show was in full swing. After 15 minutes, the comedian came on. He was a big, cheerful, bald man who played the piano, sang a few songs badly and cracked some good one-liners. His repertoire of "bald" jokes was relentless and had the audience shouting for more. The fact that they were all pretty well inebriated probably helped a lot.
He pointed to his formidable dome and cracked: "The tide has gone out, but the beach is still there." He reminded us that "grass doesn't grow on a busy street." He let us in on a family secret: "My brother has hair, but I have the brains." When did he lose his hair? "Hair today, gone tomorrow," was the quick retort.
Seagulls
Myself and my young companions, in our innocence, fell around laughing at the wit of it all. However, if it happened today, I mightn't laugh as much or as loudly. The demon baldness struck my poor head a few years after that night in Bundoran. While it has saved me money on haircuts, it is damned cold in winter. And I have to be particularly wary if there are any seagulls flying overhead.
The biggest worry for a young man when he loses his hair is, what will the girls think? It's a desperate psychological setback to your long-held notion that you are the best-looking guy in the dance-hall. Suddenly, you realise that blonde over there is not looking at you; she is looking over your shoulder at the hairy guy behind you with the beard and the ponytail.
Look at poor Frank Sinatra: great voice and bundles of greenbacks, but no hair. He desperately tried everything - laser treatment, transplants, toupees, all sorts of things. The old transplant caused him no end of pain, apparently. Like a lot of men, especially famous ones, he was prepared to go to any lengths to get a few bits of fuzz on top. Yet he went to his grave hairless.
Hair-grafting is another possibility for the desperate. Prices vary according to the amount of hair being moved. I read somewhere that for 200 grafts the cost in London is likely to be about £1,400, rising to £2,400 for 600 grafts. The most famous recipient of this type of treatment is Elton John. Some men believe that hanging upside down is the answer because the rush of blood to the head boosts circulation. A former British Labour politician claims he started hair growing again on a 20-year-old bald spot by spending one minute every day hanging upside down in a machine called The Inverter. Ted Danson
Others resort to a wig. Ted Danson, the macho barman in the American sit-com Cheers, was outed as a wig-wearer by the Bald Urban Liberation Brigade who said they were embarking on a "radical media campaign to wrest the toupees from the chrome domes of America's leading celebrities."
My own big worry about going bald was that I had so many stitches in my head - a legacy from playing rugby and crashing my bicycle - that I thought my pate would look like a road map. But no, the scars healed up well and Yul Brynner, of Magnificent Seven fame, would envy my dome today. Diplomatic friends and sympathisers try to cheer me up by saying I look "distinguished". (And if you believe that, you would believe anything.) Scientists now believe the tell-tale sign for impending baldness is a small halo of orange or red skin around the root of each hair which can be spotted with the aid of a magnifying glass and the help of an eagle-eyed friend. If the halo is there then you will go bald.
Modern times
I read recently that new research appears to show that there is nothing men can do to prevent baldness because it is pre-ordained by their genes. I confess that, deep down, I always suspected that, but when you are young you live in hope. With all the great discoveries in modern times, what with putting men on the moon, space walks, heart transplants, cloning, it is pathetic that they can't make a few hairs grow on a bald pate.
My confidence in science is, to say the least, deflated. I don't want to go to the moon, walk in space, nor do I need a heart transplant. All those things fade in significance to the excitement of possessing a fine thatch of hair. To walk across O'Connell Bridge on a wild winter's night with the wind blowing through my big mop of hair is one of my fantasies.
I remember a red-faced Redemptorist priest at a retreat 40 years ago pounding the pulpit and confidently telling the congregation: "We will all be equal when we arise on the last day." "Yes, but will we all have hair?" I muttered.