Uncle Seán was known for his ’tache …it entered every room ahead of him

We need to talk about moustaches. They’re back, in case you haven’t noticed – and not just because it’s November. In fact, the whole Movember thing doesn’t seem to be that much of an event anymore, which is a shame because I always enjoyed the spectacle of watching men on television look ridiculous for a month in aid of a good cause – take a bow Mark Cagney and Aidan Cooney. I even sported a mo myself one year in a promotional video for the Movember charity, and mighty fine I looked as well, if I say so myself.

But the moustaches that are at large right now are not the seasonal variety, doomed to be removed before the mistletoe is whipped out. Thought has gone into these, and planning. Men all over the country – and to judge by the Rugby World Cup, way beyond – have woken up one day this year, stared at themselves sadly in the mirror and thought, I know what would improve my face and consequently my life: a slug of hair on my upper lip. And lo, it has come to pass.

I’m not talking about the moustaches that go with beards here. A beard without a moustache would look plain weird, and so those moustaches can be just about forgiven on the basis of a bigger, and usually more regrettable, facial hair decision. I’m talking about the new, standalone, statement moustaches that are suddenly, worryingly, everywhere. I’m talking about The

Young Offenders and Brad Pitt and Paul Rudd and Emun Elliott and all the other men who have lately ruined their beautiful faces with moustaches. Has history taught them nothing?

Because we have been here before. When I was growing up, in the bleak 1980s, there was an epidemic of moustaches. Every young man aspired to one and, being young, most failed miserably. But they persevered, God help them, and so there was a whole wave of wispy attempts at upper lip hair doing the rounds. In my mind, this appalling vista reached its peak around the time that The Square first opened its doors in Tallaght. I remember interviewing Santa up there for a newspaper article and being horrified to find that the legendary old man in question was actually a callow youth with, yes, a wispy half-tache barely concealed behind his cotton wool beard.

We called them ronnies back then which, I’ve just learnt, is a slang term exclusive to Dublin, even though it was inspired by the British actor Ronald Coleman. And, unlike the young Tallaght Santa’s beard, very few people could pull them off. Say what you like about Stalin but he knew how to rock a moustache. Philip King, a world away, is a man who would just look wrong without a ’tache. Burt Reynolds, obviously.

And my Uncle Seán. I never saw Seán without a moustache and it’s probably fair to say that it entered every room ahead of him. I was so used to it that I never really noticed it. At my wedding, a friend enquired of me who the man with the huge moustache was and I didn’t know who he was talking about.

But Seán’s moustache really was quite the thing: it was huge and luxurious and, like a lot of Irish men, was a completely different colour to the hair on his head. Seán, in youth, was a brunette but his moustache was unmissably ginger. Even when his hair went grey the moustache refused to change or budge. But it probably wasn’t until after he died that I realised just what a talking point my uncle’s moustache was. He worked with my Dad, as it happened, but not everybody in the depot knew they were brothers-inlaw. So when Seán died, suddenly and way too young, one of the men in the depot thought he should phone my Dad – who had recently retired – to tell him. But my Dad wasn’t in and so the caller left a message with his wife, my mother, and newly bereaved sister of the deceased. ‘Tell him The Walrus is dead,’ was his missive.

Anyway, if Seán was The Walrus, then everybody currently sporting bum fluff and imagining they look cool is making a huge mistake. Growing facial hair is like open heart surgery – it’s not something you should enter into unless you’re certain that you’d be very, very good at it. If your moustache is not an object of wonder and envy, then frankly, you’re wasting your time. Movember is almost over; so no more excuses: let’s make the moustache the one folly of history we don’t repeat.