Ten writers share their most unforgettable hair disasters, from a professional bowl cut that resembled a Knight Templar to a drunken glitter-sprayed hack that made one look like an egg with cress. Each story proves that a terrible hairstyle can haunt you for decades, even after it has grown out.
A fringe inspired by Kevin Keegan
In the late 1990s, big, round, feathered fringes were a huge deal at primary school, influenced by Britney Spears or Emma Bunton. Kate Lloyd had a fringe too, but hers appeared more inspired by Kevin Keegan circa 1993. Calling it “a fringe” is an understatement; if you squint it could be a trendy east London mullet, otherwise she looked like a Knight Templar or someone wearing a hat made out of their own hair.
This cut was not the result of a sleepover prank gone wrong. It was done by a professional hairdresser who lived up the road and came round to cut her brother’s, her mum’s, and her hair. Lloyd initially assumed the look was a one-off, perhaps a move during trimming, but her mum confirmed she wore it for almost a year. Her mum has no recollection of the hair being a problem and was happy with the cut back then.
From pudding bowls to Keith Flint
Rich Pelley looks back fondly on the terrible things he did to his hair while he still had it. The first was a pudding-bowl haircut shared with his mum in the early 80s. At school, he had shoulder-length curtains with a shaved undercut, held back with an alice band, imagining he resembled a member of Radiohead rather than a teenage girl waiting to wash her face. It required constant maintenance because the curtains had to fall at exactly the right angle.
At college, it was a number one all over with a line shaved through one eyebrow, like Robbie Williams in Take That. In reality, he resembled someone who had lost a brief but intense argument with an electric razor. At university, he had dreadlocks that made him look like Sonic the Hedgehog. For his first proper job, he went bleached blond, which accidentally made him look like his mum again. Then came a spiky mohawk: less Mr T, more startled parrot.
His worst haircut was shaving the top half of his head to look like Keith Flint from the Prodigy for a 90s-themed fancy-dress party. The next morning, the costume went back in the wardrobe, but the hair remained, forcing another argument with an electric razor—this time the razor won. He thought he looked like Jay-Z, but in reality he looked more like an escaped convict.
Growing hair as armour
Jeffrey Ingold at age 15 in 2006 had hair that looked like a cross between a bird’s nest and tumbleweed. For about three years as a young teenager, he outright refused to get a haircut and let his hair run wild. Kids teased him mercilessly, asking if something was living in there or complaining to the teacher that his hair was a distraction. One day, a group of students tried to throw pieces of chewed gum into his hair.
The summer before secondary school, a small group of classmates spread a rumour that he was gay. Friends shunned him, and no one would return his calls. It was then that he decided to grow his hair. He walked into the first day of secondary school with the beginnings of an unruly, curly mane, almost unrecognisable to those who’d known him for years with an outdated mushroom cut. The classroom whispers about his sexuality were drowned out by questions about his hair. “I didn’t know much back then, but something told me it was better to be the kid with weird hair than it was to be the gay kid. My hair became my armour.”
He wore it proudly and only cut it when he got accepted to university in his final year of school, by which time it reached the top of his chest. He no longer needed to hide behind his hair. Though the kids were right: he is gay.
A summer of blond ambition
Carys Afoko was inspired to dye her hair blond after seeing Beyoncé at Glastonbury in June 2011. She went to a salon in east London with a picture of Beyoncé on her phone, and a hairdresser called Vernon transformed her into honey blond curls. That summer, she went to more festivals, parties, and art openings than ever before. But blond was more work: her hair became weaker and drier, and dark roots soon peeped through.
After a two-week beach holiday, the tropical sun bleached her curls white blond. When she went back to see Vernon, he said: “Babe, we can’t bleach it any more. The condition is terrible.” He cut her hair and sent her on her way with dark roots and a broken spirit. Over the following months, she endured the worst hair days of her life, growing out the blond and returning to her natural dark brown. She learned the hard way that colouring your hair is a commitment: the only low-maintenance way to have blond hair is to be born with it.
An extended goatee experiment
Joel Snape, forced to shave his head in his early 20s after losing most of his hair prematurely, experimented with various looks. He tried stubble, shorter beards, the Van Dyke, and then an extended goatee. He doesn’t know what he was going for—stage magician, high-end jewel thief, or futuristic pirate. He remembers writing a feature where he went undercover in a group of pickup artists, and maybe their penchant for “peacocking” rubbed off on him.
In 2003, at a press event on a boat, he sported this look. Within hours of getting back to shore, friends and flatmates reminded him that having a head like an egg is still preferable to looking like someone Jason Bourne would threaten to throw off a balcony. He got rid of it the morning afterwards and stuck to the full buzz cut until the late 2010s, when the beard plus bald combo started coming into its own. He’s had a full-bore beard ever since, and advises twentysomethings staring at their emerging scalp: keep the faith, it will improve, as long as you can grow a proper beard.
A professional bowl cut
Viv Groskop’s photograph from around 1977, when she was about three or four, shows a haircut that illustrates why virtually no one is allowed to cut her hair. In 40-plus years of adult life, only three hairdressers have gained sufficient trust to use scissors in her vicinity. The era’s fashionable “Purdey” or “pageboy” cut looked stunning on Joanna Lumley in The New Avengers, but slightly less stunning on a moody toddler old enough to know how awful she looked but too young to do anything about it.
The truth was worse: a professional hairdresser did this in a salon and her parents paid money for it. When she asked her mum for details, her mum replied: “It was done very badly.”
A Freemans-inspired fringe
Paula Cocozza, at age 10 in the 70s, asked her parents for short hair, going against traditional beauty ideals. She found a picture of a model with the hair she wanted in a Freemans mail order catalogue: a fringe and a brunette version of the style made famous by Diana, Princess of Wales. The salon was halfway between school and home. The hairdresser looked at the picture and nodded, but her hands didn’t stop shaking throughout the appointment.
Afterwards, her fringe was a dark heavy clump with little layering, looking pretty much like the haircut her mum gave her younger brother. Her mum said: “Did you see her hands were shaking the whole way through?” Cocozza made the best of it with a sequined headband, but started growing it out right then. She hasn’t had short hair, a fringe, or a change of colour since, and her hair never strays far from her shoulders.
A teenage scalping
Polly Hudson, at age 14 in 1989, had elbow-length, thick, glossy hair in perfect condition, always pulled back in a ponytail. Her best friend suggested she might as well have a short back and sides, because it would look really cool. The hairdresser thought she was joking, but Hudson insisted. She knew it was a mistake from the first snip of the scissors. A hushed silence came over the salon, and she sat in shellshocked silence while the stylist followed her instructions and scalped her.
Her mum came to collect her and announced her arrival with a piercing scream from the doorway. “Your beautiful hair!” she cried. Styled by the hairdresser, the new ’do was horrendous but had some bouncy life; when Hudson tried herself, it was flat and positively Hitler-esque. It took a full five years to look anything approaching normal again. She’s learned the hard way: every Traitors viewer is biannually tempted by fringe influencer Claudia Winkleman, but Hudson remembers too well the snail’s-pace pain of growing out a mistake and will never succumb.
Sneaky salad-bowl trims
Daniel Lavelle, at age six in the early 90s, was like a pinball, making it hard to sit still on a barber’s chair. His mum resorted to cutting his hair herself, plonking a bowl on his head and cutting any hair that poked out around the sides, usually while he played Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo Entertainment System. She would approach with the stealth of a super assassin: “The Shadow Hairdresser, Operation Haircut”.
But his worst haircuts were self-inflicted. In his early teens, he boarded the Beckham bandwagon: curtains, floppy fringe, baby mohawk, buzz cut, and several others, until he understood what putting a silk hat on a pig meant. After that, he shifted to making a statement in the form of shaved-in patterns and hair dye. Sadly, the only statement his hair makes now is that it’s had enough and doesn’t want to stick around.
A drunken glitter hack
Alexi Duggins, who’s had essentially the same haircut since age 17, came across a hairdressing stand at a London festival in 2013 offering “hairdressing inspired by music”. The promotional documentation required signing an “extreme cuts contract” with sample text: “We would like to make you aware that we have had no professional training in hairdressing.” He had drunk quite a lot of beer by that point.
Fifteen minutes later, his hair had undergone a rough hacking. The stylist unevenly lost the hair at the sides and teased the front up to emphasise his receding hairline. She then sprayed it so liberally with gold glitter that it looked like he had been styled by a disco-era King Midas. A friend laughed the next day: “You look like an egg that’s grown some cress out of the top.” Other pals developed a fondness for poking their fingers into the patchier bits, and his ears, he was told, stuck out in a way that would make him the bookies’ favourite to star in a Dumbo remake. He learned that there are worse things than looking like a human bog brush—namely, getting your hair done while drunk.
