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, 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 classic 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, rarely appearing 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 his unofficial Bond outing, 1983’s Never Say Never Again, Connery asked if he could go wigfree, but his request was denied.
For those wishing to replicate Connery’s signature Bond side parting, instruct your barber to leave 2in on top, tapering the sides and back down to 1/2in at the base. They could use a clipper to define the parting.
To style it at home, your hair should be damp, but not dripping wet. Massage in a good pomade that doesn’t provide too much shine and then use a comb to achieve the desired finish.
Katherine Muir, Dunbar, Scotland.
QUESTION
Can the alcohol in hand sanitiser be absorbed through the skin?
IT can, but in negligible quantities. Such a claim was made in the defences of a number of driving under the influence (DUI) cases in the US in the early 2000s. The 2006 study Can Alcohol-based Handrub Solutions Cause You To Lose Your Driver’s License? in the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal put this to the test.
Twenty Australian healthcare workers were asked to apply hospital-grade sanitiser Avangard (with 70% ethanol) 30 times during one hour – much more often than would occur on intensive care wards. Their alcohol levels were tested afterwards.
Six of them showed a minor increase in blood ethanol – between 0.001% and 0.0025%, the equivalent to a thimbleful of wine. Ten to 13 minutes after the final application, all the healthcare workers’ breath ethanol levels had returned to zero.
Standard hand sanitiser gel is usually 62% ethanol or propan-1ol. Alcohol is volatile and nearly all of it will evaporate before it is absorbed. You only use a few millilitres to wash your hands.
Nigel Barron, Manchester.
QUESTION
Does shaving cause hair to grow back thicker or coarser?
WHEN a teenage boy shaves, the hair may grow back marginally thicker, but this is only because it may overlap with natural hormonal fluctuations during puberty, not because of hair removal.
A human hair shaft tapers at the end. When a razor cuts away the tip, the base may feel coarser, but that’s only because the bottom portion of the hair shaft is thicker. Shaving does not typically change the re-growth process.
However, repeated waxing, which tears a hair from its root, may eventually reduce growth from certain hair follicles.
Kelly Stenn, London SE13.
QUESTION
Is Cotard’s syndrome a real illness?
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 that they – or a part of their body – 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, claiming to have no brain, nerves, chest, stomach or intestines.
Due to this belief of having no insides, 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 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 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, wandering there because he said ‘it was the closest I could get to death’.
His brain function eventually improved enough to be able to acknowledge he had never died and he was able to live independently.
The PET scan was a discovery that pushes the limits on what we know about consciousness and that blurry line between life and death.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge.
QUESTION
My nickname for jam roly-poly is dead man’s leg! Are there other macabre names for various foods?
FURTHER to the previous answer about hilarious naval terms, when my wife was at boarding school, what was supposed to be shepherd’s pie – though the pupils were never convinced – was known universally as kitten mash.
During a holiday in Scandinavia in the late Fifties, my parents saw a poster advertising foam rubber mattresses – in Norwegian, this was called skumgummi. From that day on, in our household, mousse was called Scum Gummy.
Simon Lane, Northwood, Middlesex.
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