Bald truth about 007
QUESTION Did Sean Connery wear a wig to play James Bond?
In 1961, James Bond producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman made the inspired decision to select Sean Connery, then a relative unknown from Edinburgh, to play Ian Fleming’s debonair spy.
The macho Scot set the standard for the role, becoming a movie icon and Hollywood sex symbol.
While Connery had the style and charisma required for Bond, what he lacked was the hair.
He had developed male pattern baldness — a receding hairline and thinning crown — in his early 20s.
The role of James Bond required a classic side parting, so Connery wore a hairpiece in every 007 movie he made.
Between films, he was never concerned about his hair loss, and rarely appeared in public with a hairpiece.
Connery was not alone: Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, Lorne Greene, William Shatner, Burt Reynolds and John Wayne wore wigs. The difference was they wore them on and off set.
In 1983’s never Say never Again, Connery wanted to go wig-free, but his request was denied.
For those wishing to replicate Connery’s signature Bond side parting, instruct your barber to leave 2 in on top, tapering the sides and back down to ½in at the base. They could use a clipper to define the parting.
Mrs Katherine Muir, Dunbar, East Lothian.
QUESTION Can the alcohol in hand sanitiser be absorbed through the skin?
IT CAN, but in negligible quantities, despite the claims made when defending a number of driving-under-the-influence (DUI) cases in the U.S. in the early 2000s.
The 2006 study Can Alcohol-based Handrub Solutions Cause You To Lose Your Driver’s Licence? in the Antimicrobial Agents And Chemotherapy journal put this to the test. Twenty Australian health care workers were asked to apply hospital grade sanitiser Avangard (with 70 per cent ethanol) 30 times in one hour — much more often than would even occur on intensive care wards.
Their alcohol levels were tested shortly afterwards. Six of the workers showed a minor increase in breath ethanol levels — between 0.001 per cent and 0.0025 per cent, equivalent to a thimbleful of wine.
Ten to 13 minutes after the final application, their breath ethanol levels had returned to zero.
Standard hand sanitiser gel is usually 62 per cent ethanol or propan-1-ol. Alcohol is volatile and nearly all of it will evaporate before it is absorbed.
Nigel Barron, Manchester.
QUESTION Is Cotard’s syndrome real?
COTARD’S syndrome — also known as Cotard’s delusion or Walking Corpse syndrome — is such a rarity in psychiatry that research is limited.
As it usually occurs in patients with depression or schizophrenia, some doctors see it as a type of depression.
It is generally referred to as a mental illness in which someone denies their own existence and believes they are dead.
The term was coined by Dr Jules Cotard in 19th-century France when describing his patient, Mademoiselle X, who was convinced she was immortal.
She claimed to have no brain, nerves, chest, stomach or intestines. She refused to eat and died of starvation.
What doctors know about Cotard’s syndrome is based only on a handful of cases from around the world. Some result in suicide, and even when modern drugs and psychotherapy have helped other patients to make a slow recovery, they can remain convinced that even though they are alive, they were once dead.
The first sufferer to have a PET scan, which provides information about organs and tissues, was a British patient known only as Graham.
neurologists were stunned to find his scan looked just like that of someone in a vegetative state who is brain dead. no one had seen anything like it in a person who is walking and talking.
Graham frequently had to be brought back from the local graveyard. He wandered there because he said ‘it was the closest I could get to death’.
His brain function eventually improved enough for him to be able to acknowledge that he had never died, and he was able to live independently.
His PET scan was a discovery that pushed the limits on what we know about consciousness and that blurry line between life and death. Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.
QUESTION Why don’t rugby league players contest possession at the scrum? Is this the most pointless rule in sport?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, in 2014, French runner Mahiedine Mekhissi Benabbad was disqualified from the European 3,000m steeplechase championship for taking off his vest on the final straight and sticking it in his mouth. This cost him his gold medal.
At first the athlete, who was miles ahead so a photo finish was not an issue, was sensibly given a warning. By means of an apology, he explained: ‘It was just the emotion taking over.’
But Spain, which stood to gain a bronze medal if Mekhissi-Benabbad was disqualified, protested. Following an appeal and counter-appeal, he lost his medal. He was in contravention of rule 143.8, which states: ‘Every athlete will be provided with a number, which during the competition must be worn visibly. These numbers must be worn as issued and may not be cut, folded or obscured in any way.’
Sarah Davies, Kidderminster, Worcs.
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