Hairy Ears

Artrockers,

The ladies like to claim the moral high ground when it comes to suffering. Sure, that monthly thing is a nightmare that can turn some ladies into nightmares and child-birth is the most painful experience any human being can go though ever, but really, none of it can compare to the horror that is limited to men only - hair in your ears. Yeah, how do you like that ladies? Not so smug now are you? You can keep your complicated child-bearing plumbing problems, we've got hair in our ears. It's something that happens to men once they pass 30, the pristine lobes sprout hair and gradually a bush appears. As a colleague just said to me, it's fascinating when it first appears, you play with it between your fingers, a new experience, but pretty soon it's growing out of your ear and you become aware that people you're having conversations with aren't looking you in the eye, they're mesmerised by the new barnet appearing from your lug-holes. And the nose hairs join in and start snaking out of the nostrils, and the eyebrows become anarchists, determined to outdo Denis Healey in the bushy brow stakes. The horror!

It's a terrible burden to carry, the gradual metamorphosis into a lychanthrope is not what you were expecting at the closure of youth, you didn't think you'd have to buy a pair of those nasal and ear clippers, you weren't expecting to ask the barber to clip your ears and you certainly didn't forsee eyebrows that grew like ivy up an old wall.

But we battle on, we don't complain, we're men. We suffer in silence as the dreaded hair takes over. It's very nearly as horrible as finding the first grey pubic hair - which is, presumably, not restricted to men. But grey hair growing out of your ears, that's male suffering right there.

Tom Artrocker