Justin whips off the whiskers

TWENTY three moustaches that were grown in the hairy month of ‘Movember’ – along with the whiskers of an unexpected ‘volunteer’ – had raised over €8,500 for the Kerry Cancer Link Bus by the time the shaving was finished and the clumps of hair were swept off the floor of Bob Griffin’s bar in Dingle on Sunday night.

The Movember fundraiser, which aims to raise awareness of men’s health issues nationwide, was taken up in West Kerry last year by builder David Russell from Coimín on the strength of a conversation with some of his workmates. They soon assembled a crew of volunteers who grew moustaches during the month of November and then shaved them off for a price.

The crew returned to the task again this year and after growing moustaches that made some of them look like a bunch of gringos straight out of a spaghetti western, they assembled in Bob Griffin’s bar on Sunday for what fear a’ tí Muiris Ó Fiannachta described as the ‘óiche barra’.

The men were happy to be rid of the burden of their moustaches which were generally felt to be ‘itchy and a goddamn nuisance’. Laurence Courtney, who was a rare sight around Dingle in the 1960s with the bushy whiskers he then wore, added that there were lots of other reasons as well for getting rid of a beard: “You’d be squeezing porter out of it, you’d never know what you’d find stuck in it… and the women were always complaining.”

There was one man though who went to Bob Griffin’s on Sunday night with no intention of losing his beard. Mike Dowd from Garfinny has had a beard for the past five years or more and he’d have it still except that somebody in the pub offered to donate €100 to the cause if he agreed to have it shaved off.

More offers followed and soon there was a pot of €740 riding on Mike’s beard. It was too good an offer to refuse so Mike submitted to Justin Quinlan’s razor, bringing the total collected for charity to over €8,500.

“This means a lot to us,” said Breda Dyland of the Kerry Cancer Link Bus, which has brought over 22,000 patients to hospital appointments in Cork and Limerick over the past nine years. “We don’t get any State funding – not a penny. Without you we wouldn’t be able to keep the service going.”

Photo by Declan Malone Laurence Courtney, David Russell, Jason Courtney and Kevin Skerry in Bob Griffin’s bar, shortly before losing their Movember moustaches to Justin Quinlan’s blade.

Barber Justin Quinlan freeing Declan O’Sullivan of his Movember moustache.