Walking down the street the other day, I passed a man with a ginger wig.
It was obviously a wig. Men who are clearly in their seventies, at their least, do not sport thick, Joe-Brown-style ginger manes of hair without getting the occasional grey hair, receding hairline or bald patch. They certainly don’t manage to do so whilst still having dark brown sideburns, as this man did.
I considered his choice to be a Wigster. In this day and age, there’s no shame any more in being bald. It’s a sign of virility, or homosexuality, or that you are one of the Mitchell brothers from EastEnders. Or Moby. Or Duncan Goodhew. Or Cyril Shaps. Should I ever start to go bald – something which fortunately hasn’t happened yet no matter what other people might say – I wouldn’t be worried at the thought of being bald. Many of my best friends are follically-challenged. I’d rather look like a Snooker ball than suffer the ignomnity of being a Wiggy.
Because wigs are all about vanity, aren’t they? That’s why TV presenters wear them. The thought that given the options of looking old and bald and looking stupid and hirsute, the second option is the better (because they think it makes them look younger. It doesn’t. But presumably they think it does.)
But to choose a deliberately ill-suited wig – and a ginger one at that – struck me as a different story entirely. A man down on his luck, without the love of a good woman to set him right. Maybe he’s concealing an unsightly scar. Who couldn’t afford a proper wig, and instead had to get a wig on the NHS, or from the charity wig basket, and the only one they had left was a Tina Turner Comedy Shock Wig from 1979.
