Bookmark and Share

Wednesday 13th May 2009

OK, it's gone. For now.
The audition was a key factor, but you know what, that stupid moustache was making me unhappy. It was like an albatross around my philtrum. It made me look stupid, it made me feel stupid. I felt slightly nauseous every time I saw myself in the mirror. I hated myself. In the few moments that I forgot it was there I was at rest, but for most of the time I was tense and unhappy and in fear of being misinterpreted or offending or just being thought to be the prick that you would have to assume I was if you didn't know what I was doing.
Much as I would love to rescue the toothbrush from the tyranny of Hitler, I think it will take a braver and better known man than me to do it. I don't actually think it's possible.
It would be good if we could reclaim it and in theory it should be possible, but it has become such an icon and is too heavily associated with him, to shift him off it. Hitler has won. Again. As usual. Will no one ever defeat him?
I had the thing for a week and that's not a bad little experiment if that is all it is, though might try and grow it again in June(much as the very thought appalls me).
I ummed and ahhed about it all day, but then, just before bedtime I bit the bullet and shaved the spidery, horrible mess off. And it felt like I had had a millstone lifted from my shoulders immediately. I was me again. Even I had a totally different perspective on myself when it was there and even after just seven days I had forgotten what I looked like. But there I was again, the non-mentally ill/paedophile looking me. My face was lightened in every sense. I was me again. I could go out in the street without the feeling that people were looking at me and laughing at me and hating me (or worse loving me).
I didn't realise til it was gone how unhappy it had been making me or how hopeless the task I had set myself would be.
It shouldn't be the case, but it is. And as Hitler is likely to be the most remembered face of the 20th Century I am not sure the association will ever be shifted. Not for some considerable time.
It's incredible how powerful a hundred or so bristly hairs can be and how much difference they can make. Hitler has ruined that moustache for everyone. If there was one consolation for him as he raised the gun to his head in the bunker, perhaps it would have been that. Everything else he had done would be derided and hated (apart from his probably fictional ability to get train timetables working efficiently), but at least he might have realised that no one but him and possibly the bloke from Sparks would ever be able to carry off that tache again.
Looking at the state of myself I did think that maybe it was time to get my hair cut. It is stupidly long and messy. So if I go short again then my mum at least will have something to (indirectly) thank Hitler for. Because he's started me thinking that all extraneous hair is unnecessary.
Meanwhile I have been making excellent progress on my latest book and should get a workable first draft completed tomorrow. Still some way to go I suspect.
And thanks for the continued kind donations at my justgiving page. Perhaps we can defeat Hitler a little by using his moustache to raise money for a brilliant cause, that he would have hated. If you haven't donated yet then I hope you will consider doing so. The current top donation is £101 pounds (the £200 is a payment for an advert in the brochure - still some spots available). So if you can beat that you'll get something cool. Though not the moustache I shaved off yesterday, because in my haste to be rid of it I forgot to collect up the bristles.

Bookmark and Share



Subscribe to my Substack here
See RHLSTP on tour Guests and ticket links here
Help us make more podcasts by becoming a badger You get loads of extras if you do.
To join Richard's Substack (and get a lot of emails) visit:

richardherring.substack.com