Before I went to bed in the early hours of this morning I shaved off a week worth's of beard and moustache growth. Except for one small area. A little square under my nose. My Hitler moustache.
This was only going to be temporary - I wanted to have it for the Collings and Herrin podcast we were recording at midday (as always available
here) Even though that it would not be in vision in this audio entertainment, I wanted to see if it would affect my performance, my personality and Collings' concentration. Would he be scared?
I have to admit though that I was disappointed with the result. It was a mere scruffy shadow of the fine toothbrush of our Fuhrer (I mean,
the Fuhrer). I looked like a wartime spiv or Blakey from "On The Buses" or Hardy from Laurel and Hardy. I looked like my grandad, which was weird. He'd had a moustache that was slightly Chaplinesque.
It didn't give me the gravitas of a dictator, but just made me look comic and mentally ill. Still I'd gone to all this bother and I had to see it through. If Hitler had looked as bad as me with a Hitler moustache then I think the course of world history might have been different.
I was aware though, by doing this last thing at night that I might wake up in the morning and forget what I'd done and go about my daily business without understanding why people were looking at me strangely.
Indeed I was woken by the doorbell and a delivery man was on the other end of the entryphone. I looked for my keys and went downstairs, blurry-eyed, still half asleep, forgetting about the hair on my upper lip. But as it turned out the postman had just left my package on the doorstep so I missed the chance to get a reaction.
But I laughed when I saw my reflection in the bathroom mirror. But when I compared it to the picture on the front of "Hubris" by Ian Kershaw, I was bound to suffer from Hitler envy. I don't know how Hitler managed to get his so bushy, all the way up to the nostrils. As I later suggested, maybe he'd meshed his moustache with his nasal hair to achieve this effect. But more likely he was wearing a false one. Surely no one can grow a moustache like that. Or maybe you have to be really evil to do so. You make a contract with the devil and that's one of the things you get in return.
I did pop down to the newsagents to pick up the papers before Collings arrived and did forget about my face. But the Asian man who served me didn't make any comment, though with hindsight he may have been looking at me a little bit askew as he gave me my change. Hardly counts as a big social experiment though.
Collings didn't seem to look me in the face when he arrived and I had to prompt him as I was making him a coffee, as to whether he'd noticed anything different. He claimed to have spotted it straight away and to have been playing to cool, but he is nothing if not a liar.
I don't know if it really made any difference to the podcast, but we did discuss it at length. I was surprised to hear that Collings, who has lived a sheltered life, was not aware that the Hitler moustache is a form of pubic hair topiary favoured by certain ladies. It leaves one square of hair above an otherwise shaven genital area. How strange it is that it is appropriate to have a Hitler moustache on your gentilia but not on your face. How come no one is offended by women making their pudenda a tribute to the most evil man who has ever lived? Does anyone take a step back and refuse to go any further once they see this, for fear of condoning the actions of the Nazis? Not they don't. They get right on with it and put their cock in what substitutes for Hitler's mouth. You might think that satirises him and makes him look ridiculous, but would you feel the same if all men with Hitler moustaches happily felated people to make the same point?
And wouldn't Hitler love having his square moustache gracing a million lower bellies? If you really want to punish him then you should ban the lower kind of moustache, not the upper one. But at least people's attitudes should be consistent.
I shaved it off the minute we'd taken the photo, but I might grow it again for a more in depth experiment later. I am hoping to reclaim this moustache and my ultimate aim is for it to be renamed the Herring Moustache, which gives it a strange double meaing. And I'd especially love the pubic hair version to have my name. I don't have many ambitions any more, but it would be good to be remembered every time a particular type of adventurous lady takes off her underpants. And better that I am remembered and honoured in this way than Hitler? Don't you think?
