RICHARD ORD: Trims, eyebrows and the god of hellfire!

Take a look at the picture at the top of this column. That fresh faced young whippersnapper sandwiched between the '˜Richard' and the '˜Ord' may look half-presentable but he's an imposter.
Richard Ord yesterdayRichard Ord yesterday
Richard Ord yesterday

I haven’t seen that man for donkey‘s years.

That’s the beauty of newspapers. I can remain forever young. Well, forever youngish.

A combination of busy work schedules, laziness and misplaced vanity means my byline photograph hasn’t changed in more than a decade.

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It should be updated on a yearly basis, but who’s going to push for that? Not me, that’s for sure. And I doubt, you give a monkeys.

My bosses perhaps, but then they are in the business of selling newspapers. The gnarled phizog of Richard Ord isn’t going to sell many papers. If anything it’s going to scare them off (or so the sales and marketing reports suggested).

A framed copy of my grizzled mug on your mantelpiece can, at least, keep the kids off the fire but that is its only selling point..

My boat race (face) is looking more grizzly than usual, courtesy of the beard I have been cultivating over the last few months.

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The older you get the less attention you pay to your looks (I believe the reverse may be true of women). The mirror is no longer your friend. It speaks the truth. Unlike selfies which can be manipulated to reflect a far different version of the truth.

If Facebook is anything to go by, then we live in a world of photogenic beauties. I suspect Tinder is the same. The real world, however, is not so pretty.

What you don’t want to do is draw attention to yourself. Hence, the face at the top of this page staying the same. We dare not update it now. It’d be too much. People would wonder what had happened to me!

“Blimey, what’s happened to his face? He looks like he’s seen a ghost!”

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It would be the newspaper equivalent of that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the Nazis seeking the secret of eternal life drink from the wrong grail and shrivel before our eyes. (I’m beginning to think I may have some body image issues I need to talk through, so I’ll move on.)

The gulf in my beauty regime (flannel to face, toothbrush to teeth) and that of the younger generation was highlighted at my first trip to a Turkish barber this weekend.

I was in one seat giving the barber my usual detailed explanation of what I wanted “erm, yeah, just tidy it up thanks.” In the next seat arrived a young man of 18 or so. Nothing unusual there, except he had perfectly coiffured hair! What could he possibly want trimming? “Just me eyebrows mate.”

Eyebrows? The lad was getting his eyebrows trimmed. It took more than seven minutes.

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When it came to my turn it was hair of a different kind that caught the barber’s attention. After trimming the hair on my head, he then produced a pyrotechnic display of some aplomb to remove the hair from my ears! He dipped what I have since found out is called a fire stick into some flammable liquid, set it ablaze and swished it round the side of my head. The air was heavy with the smell of singed ear hair.

Great. The subtle removal of ear hair by the discreet barbers gentle application of clippers, has been replaced with a fire show for all the world to see. Cirque du Barber Shop, anyone?

Thanks for that.

Age is a terrible thing, so I’d rather not draw attention to it, thank you very much. .

The youthful byline photo stays ...