Spoiler alert: The Masked Singer isn’t anyone famous...
My eldest son has managed to get himself an unconditional place at university - for that reason alone, you should be worried.
Within an hour of revealing this news he texted me to ask if he could borrow a tenner because he had accidentally shaved his head and needed a hairdresser to rectify the situation. What kind of person ‘accidentally’ shaves his head? The kind, it appears, that Leeds University is keen to have within its student ranks. Leeds is not his first choice. Bradley, I suspect, is not their’s. I’m not a fan of ‘unconditional’ offers for university places. By all means take the pressure off the students, but don’t remove it completely. I checked with my boy to ask exactly what having an ‘unconditional’ offer meant. He replied: “Feet up time.” And this from a boy whose feet spend less time on the ground than those of Oleg Skripochka (he’s a Russian cosmonaut, but I guess you know that already).
He sent me a photograph of his head as proof that he’d shaved it. I didn’t doubt him. Who makes up a story like that? “I was shaving and I went too far,” he explained. Yes, if you’ve gone past your ears you’ve gone too far (Chapter 3, paragraph 2 of Shaving For Luddites, HarperCollins, £3.99). Like I say, you ought to be worried… this boy is part of our future.
I recommended a barbers to him. Not because I had a good experience there, but because it was cheap. Needing a trim, I popped into this establishment because there was no-one queuing (that should have been my first clue). “I’m growing my hair long,” I told the barber, “so just take a bit off.” He proceeded to attack my barnet with a pair of clippers. It was the hairdressing equivalent of TV’s The Masked Singer UK. The judging panel guess that these people dressed up a hedgehogs and trees are Hollywood stars like Jason Statham or Sir Ian McKellen, but when unmasked, they are bog standard D-list celebs and has-beens.
At the barbers, I hoped for a George Clooney, but got a Patsy Palmer. Leeds University may have a similar experience.
If you haven’t watched The Masked Singer, I’d recommend it. It promises little and delivers even less. The judges have guessed that Monster is actually Elton John. I bet it’s Oleg Skripochka! You read it here first.