mostly david ephgrave

If I don’t tidy up my beard soon, I’ll morph into an early-Eighties Beach Boy.  This style choice isn’t intentional; it’s brought about by a 50/50 mix of laziness/busyness. There hasn’t been sufficient time to go about my usual high standard of personal grooming. If I’m not careful, I’ll be buying a sandpit, pushing my piano into it and playing the verse riff of California Girls on it on loop. (This is a very specific Brian Wilson reference.) I’d better knock my untrimmed facial hair on the head before Thursday’s Hitchin gig. Phil Kay’s on the bill, and I don’t want to end up in the crossfire of a high stakes ‘beard-off’. He’s more likely to this battle than me; he’s a professional beard wearer. If nothing else, I’ll buy a beard snood, as I’m not sure our public liability insurance covers hygiene.

No-one knows what Jeff Lynne’s face looks like. It’s the greatest mystery of the late 20 th / early 21 st Century; something the fantastically talented singer / songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist couldn’t even answer himself. When he burst on the scene in 1970 as a member of Roy Wood’s band The Move, the trademark ginger beard and afro were already present. By the time they’d morphed into ELO, he’d discovered his love for sunglasses. Since then, he’s never looked back (unless turning left or right). He’s maintained the same stylistic choices for forty-four years. Until I see evidence to the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised to learn he'd had facial hair since birth. Perhaps he kept the look to protect his anonymity. All he has to do to keep a low profile is remove his glasses and straighten his hair. Shave off the beard and he’d be unrecognisable. Noel Edmonds adopts a similar approach, to less success: run a razor across his ...

Over the past week my beard has crept back onto my face. This makes it sound like a separate entity; a hairy beast that skulks around my flat and crawls up my body when I’m sleeping, returning to its rightful place. It’s worth clarifying that my beard doesn’t have a mind of its own – but it has grown back despite my best intentions. For almost as long as I could manage it, I’ve had facial hair. I’m not talking about my eyebrows – they’re a given – but a variety of supplementary adornments, grown according to my personal taste. My love of music certainly played a part: I used to wish I was a child of the Sixties – and if I couldn’t make that dream a reality, I could make myself look the part at the very least. I used to sport a massive pair of muttonchops, that got abuse and praise in equal measure. People would speed past me in their cars, shouting “SIDBURNS” out of the window – as if I was unaware I had them and needed some kind of verbal warning. At drama sc...