Andrew Kay: Movember darling

I recieved an email from a PR friend this week. In it she enquired whether I would be willing to help support a charity by participating in the Movember campaign.

I’m very attached to my tache, in every possible sense, as I have learnt to my cost. It is remarkable how many people think it is appropriate to not only confront me about it but also to give it a tug to see if it is real. That tugging hurts like hell I can assure you, as easily as I can assure you that it is real.

Much as I want to help her in her quest to support the charity I was a little bemused. After all, Movember started as a thing where for one month men would attempt to sprout some face furniture. I suspect that it has had a lot to do with the current trend for full beards, sideburns and the like. There are even a growing number of curled and waxed specimens like my own and that which adorns the noble upper lip of Atters Attree. And we have both had the damned things for years.

A moustache like ours is as demanding a beast as a small dog. It requires rather a lot of attention. Grooming is of course top of that list. Daily attention is required to keep the blooming thing looking nice and I indulge in monthly trips to the barbers for a wet shave and spruce up.

Unlike a small dog you do not have to feed it, inversely you do have to dislodge food from it.

“It can be rather embarrassing to have a stranger on a bus point out that the tips of your tache are tinged with taramasalata!”

No matter how hard one tries, dinner does stick to upper lip growth like jam to a spoon. It does it in a sometimes inperceptible way, or partly. In other words I don’t seem to notice it but other people do. It can be rather embarrassing to have a stranger on a bus point out that the tips of your tache are tinged with taramasalata!

So having been asked to join in the face fur fun I was challenged to come up with an idea that was associated with tache growing. “Would you be prepared to die it green to match the branding of the charity?” I was quick to respond with a firm no. There’s already a man in Brighton with vibrantly dyed facial hair. That’s his trade-mark and I would certainly not want to tread on his toes, or should I say nose.

I suppose I could do the reverse and shave the thing off again, but I’m rather loathe to do that as it always inspires a chorus of disapproval. I did it earlier this year, as I was going on holiday and sea water plays havoc with moustache wax. An unwaxed tache can look pretty grim as you stride confidently out of the water hoping that you cut the same impression as Daniel Craig but knowing deep down that you look more like Moby Dick.

So shaving it off is not an option, not for me anyway, not right now. So I have to come up with another idea.

Perhaps people would like to sponsor my tache in retrospect. The thing is, I was a smooth as a baby’s botty until I was in my mid-twenties, then, in a fit of trying to look a little more mature, I finally managed to grow a rather dapper, if small moustache. That was when I was 25, so 32 years ago. Now taking into consideration the time when I have removed it I will happily round that down to 25 years of moustache. At 10p a year you could sponsor my tache for the Nuffield Brighton to the affordable sum of £2.50, not a lot really, and it means that I don’t have to dye it green and look like I have been living on a diet of pea soup.
Movember
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