Believe me, Gordon, gentlemen don’t go blond
As the celebrity chef bleaches his locks, fellow fair-haired (and middle-aged) man, Simon Mills sounds a note of warning
Throughout my life, I have been dismissed as a blousy lightweight – and I blame my barnet
Ionce dyed my hair. I was 17-yearsold and into Generation X, the punk band fronted by a very youthful, bottle-blond Billy Idol. Perusing the aisles at my local Boots, I was confident that I could buy Billy’s swaggering attitude and sexual magnetism off the shelf with a two-part treatment from Wella, transforming my chaotic, strawcoloured mop into a rockin’ quiff overnight.
It didn’t go well. The dinner lady-ish, Labrador colour I chose made me appear not dangerous and rebellious but benign and canine. The fact that I looked more like a teenage Clare Balding than a young Billy Idol (I know – I found the pics the other day) has stopped me from ever repeating the process. That and the very obvious fact that I am a journalist and a father with a mortgage and backache. And not a punk rock legend.
For old times’ sake, I recently googled Billy Idol, mainly to check on his hair. He is 66-years-old now. Still rockin’ and still rocking a rather magnificently full head of white bleached spikes. But here’s the thing. Billy was and is a genuine rock star. Rock stars can do stuff like this, way into middle age and in later life, and still kinda get away with it. Much more regular chaps, like chefs for instance, maybe not so much?
TV cook Gordon Ramsay, recently spotted with a new, mid-life crisis bleach job, clearly didn’t get the rock ’n’ roll memo. The formerly mousyhaired restaurateur is now showing off a newly frosted platinum blond tone best described as “Phil Foden, Euro 2020”. Aged 55, our foulmouthed chef is raging hard against the dying of the white, not going gentle into good highlights, or anything else that will let nature take its course, as his laser wrinkle removal and alleged £30,000 spend on a hair transplant make clear.
What a hero. I think he may be setting a genuine trend among us men of a certain age. “For a middle-aged, naturally fair-haired man who probably now has quite a few grey bits showing, dying your hair bleach blond is actually not a bad idea,” argues Nicky Clarke, hairdresser to the stars. “Bleach is like rocket fuel for men’s hair. As well as making a statement, it’s a clever alternative to subtly treating the grey and adding a bit of body to what will be its thin and coarse texture.”
Already Nordically coiffured, Ramsay’s new Marilyn Monroe-like platinum quiff is not a huge departure from his natural colour, notes Clarke. “It’s not like he’s done what Martin Kemp did and transformed from jet black to silver fox, in one sitting. This is actually more subtle.”
Clarke believes that middle-aged men’s hair now refers to the significant pop-cultural moments from their lives: “The times when they felt at their best and most vibrant.” Could it be that Ramsay is having a Billy moment? Is he doing what women do by going “grombré” (the fashionable portmanteau word combining “grey” and “ombré”: letting one’s dyed hair gradually grow out and transition into the natural silver hair)? Is he embracing the life change, rather than shaming it?
But a warning. From me to Gordon. Man to man. Blond to blond. While old men with dyed hair do not get much respect (“Ronald Reagan does not dye his hair,” Gerald Ford once said of the actor-turned-us president. “He’s just prematurely orange”), men with genetically blond hair, get even less, especially if they do not pay attention to skin tone, darling.
A pasty Renfrewshire epidermis (or an East Yorkshire complexion like your reporter’s) doesn’t really “show” well with a do the same colour as newly shined chrome bumper, and the best colour matches for Gordon’s newly bleached mane and wardrobe might be a bit out of his regular chromatic purview; Yves Klein blue, fuchsia, burgundy. Also sky blue, bubblegum pink, pinkish brown and pinkish grey. Eyebrows? Does one bleach to match or celebrate the head hair/eyebrow contrast? No, it’ll sting like heck and while you may think you look like David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, the person you’ll most closely resemble is Rhydian from X Factor – remember him?
Throughout my own life I have been acutely aware that, as a fair-haired man, I am not taken seriously. Not at all. I have been dismissed as a blousy, insignificant lightweight. And I mostly blame my barnet for this.
Throughout history, unless they happen to be Robert Redford playing Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men, men with blond hair carry no authority or gravitas. Even when they do achieve positions of power – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump – they are dismissed as buffoons and ridiculed as lightweights. As a blond man, one’s reputational ceiling is “himbo”.
I refer you to Justin Bieber, Pete Davidson, Gazza et al. No wonder the Nordic-tressed likes of Brad Pitt and yours truly are embracing their nu-grombré tones.
But still, bleaching hair is a rite of passage for famous men wanting attention. Everyone from Colin Farrell to Tom Cruise (icy white blond in Michael Mann’s terrific 2004 flick Collateral, remember?) have taken to the bottle at some stage. Recently I have been similarly experimenting myself. I still have some hair but it is now more donkey than Billy. The hedge-like sides are a coarse and silvery tagliatelle. Do I leave it to grey and then progress, with dignity, to Prince Charles white? Or do I risk Rudi-giuliani-at-the-four-seasonstotal-landscaping-press-conference humiliation, my own sideburns dripping with mascara?
I try gentle, organic shampoo dyes (ineffective) and caffeine rinses, before eventually deciding on a more brutally fragranced, grey-reducing unguent called Control GX. You massage it into the grey bits, wait a minute, then rinse it off. Simple. The promise is a natural-looking and unbrassy return to one’s natural tone. Unfortunately, during this process, I squirt a large amount of Control GX onto the bathroom tiles, spraying scary, purple globules of the stuff everywhere.
Has it worked? Is my hair now like sexy Brad’s? Too early to say. But the grout in my shower cubicle is looking a really nice shade of grombré.