Despite being in my twenties, any facial fuzz growth looks like I've stuck iron filings to my face whilst drunk. A full-on, Word-friendly face-framer will just have to wait...

Whilst I had one briefly as a younger man, I suspect that if I grew one now it would be very grey and it would make me look old.

Oh well, I'll never make it as a Word cover star.

..but I looked like a border collie. It came ot black,brown,grey and white.

The Word is an aspirational title?
Was this part of the plan?

my friend Matt used to say it made me look like Ice T.

What with my name you think i'd avoid one like Status Que to a new chord but Mine enhances the belief that my students have that i'm a Hells Angel.,Should mention i teach Motorcyle mechanics for Moto GP teams,Hey if it helps keep em in line then the Beard stays

No tache neither

Finding myself laid up over a weekend with a cold I didn't shave. Come Monday morning I was still feeling rough, but had to go in to work, and didn't bother. I stuck with it for a couple of weeks, but it's almost completely grey and makes me look another 20 years older, so it went.
I did enjoy not shaving though.

... but I hate facial fur even more. Like others here mine comes out the wrong colour anyway (ginger & grey, though I'm not a ginger "up top"), and it puts years on me, but it's mainly the feeling of it I can't stand...

via permanent-stubble alley. My skin is horribly sensitive to shaving, so what started out as shaving every few days became, with the spontaneous purchase of a beard trimmer, technically a beard, even if it's rather slimline.

Mentally I still feel like a stubbled youth, rather than a bearded man, but the difference is slight.

I had one during my late 20's and early 30's.

I thought I looked utterly irresistible. This depsite the fact I remained categorically single during that time.

Shaved it off to reveal, to my mind, a face like a boiled turnip and within a year or so was married. Go figure.

Mrs B, ironically, has become fond of facial flora and encourages me to grow a goatee every once in a while. I do but after about 6 weeks I have to shave it off in a fit of pique, cheesed off by the inordinate amount of fannying about it takes to keep its shape and length.

I have had a beard since i was first able to grow one (about 16 /17 yrs old). I love it...i've had it long, goatee, and various subtle variations over the years. At the moment it is regularly trimmed and neat and so far showing no signs of grey, though that can't go on forever...

... I'm unable to grow a beard, without looking rather odd when a one and a half-inch gap appears amongst the growth.

A 'tache is not an option (only Burt Reynolds & Tom Selleck seem to look good with one), so I'll stick with sideburns as my only real foray into the hirsute world.

that Liz Taylor had had so many face lifts, she ended up with a beard.

Sorry if that's spoilt anyone's dinner.

it's a goatee and I'm debating shaving it off at the moment.

with a beard looks as though he got up in a hurry and put his head on upside down, so no beard for me since the early nineties, when I embraced my inner shinehead for good.

I've had plenty of beards in my time, and impressively rugged I looked, too (in my mind's eye, anyway), but each time I shaved one off it took years off me. Eventually I realised that I needed that kind of help on a permanent basis....

...I Try. I am one of those (un)fortunates who shaves every other day, and I can leave shaving for a week, and still look like I have only a mild five o'clock shadow.

I wonder would Baby Bio work on my chin. I'd love a beard, but a George Michaelesque stubble is about as far as I ever get.

..someone made the excellent point that men with trimmed beards are not as trusted or as liked as those clean shaven or with unruly beards? Jeremy Beadle and Noel Edmonds were in the case for the prosecution, as I recall.

Like many things, age is a factor. Young students with Kings of Leon/Ray LaMontagne beards and great hair look terrific; men with thinning hair and greying beards can look like David Crosby when they think they look like a modern alt-folkie. Ditto the designer stubble - in your head you are George Michael but you look more like Alan Sugar.

The bald head & goatee is to the 2000's what the tache & centre parting was to the 1970s.

... who buzzes his head and beard to a zero at the same time usually about twice a week. If that counts as a beard then I guess I do have one, but not yer full on ZZ Top.

Due to a slightly alarming lack of proper tache growth, any time I have tried to grow a proper beard there was an unfortunate resemblance to Michael Eavis.

And find that the beardless me resembles Arthur Lowe without his specs, while bearded I look like Big Mac, the fat porter off Casualty. So the fat porter look it is.

Since I finished school.

Not many bearded footballers now has anyone noticed? Suppose they're not very "Premiership."

Missus complains when it looks too much like Bonnie 'Prince' Billy but mostly it gets the thumbs up

...every so often, usually last 4-5 weeks then I get annoyed with all the high maintainence. Often the shaving-off part can be fun, as it usually means a day or two of full scale motorhead/mexican bandit look with essentially only the 'middle bit' of the goatee removed before I get rid of the lot. Great fun.

Women won't understand any of this stuff, you know...

...that it seems an irony of 'Frank Beard' proportions that Heppo & Elz, despite all the pioneering and fearless work they do on behalf of the National Beard Promotion Agency, DON'T have beards (unless they have stick-on ones for use when accepting awards at the annual NBPA luncheon?).

I'm not technically gifted/bothered enough to give it a go myself, but can anyone with photoshop or whatever give us an idea what the boys would look like with their fake beards?

(Inspiration might come from the sleeve of the first Macca solo album and a recent Bruce Cockburn best-of.)

It was ginger.

Never tried again.

But no beard. Never have. Too itchy.

I didn't need much of an excuse to link to (not a very good version) of one of my favourite songs - about 3:36 in (I don't think the dog was invited!):

Originally full from 1992-7 goatee since then.

I've just scraped several days-worth of stubble off my face, in the belief that it will make shaving for work tomorrow a bit quicker and I can spend an extra five minutes in bed watching The Hoobs. That's a close as I get to a beard in 2009.

In my early 20s I resembled a bass player from a Norwegian death metal band - Hair down my back and an unruly goatee.

My brother surprised me last week by turning up without the beard he has sported since he was 17. All my mental images of him clean shaven date back to his late teens. In the intervening years he’s become a 34 year old father of two. There are lines that weren't there before. He looks older without the beard than he did with it.

I recall an edition of Volume Magazine which serialised ‘The Diary of Dave Stewart's Beard.’ If I remember correctly the beard temporarily attaches itself to the face of Elvis Costello, only to fall on hard times. It ends up drinking under a bridge with a gang of homeless beards that once belonged to Fleetwood Mac roadies.

I shave once every three weeks, and still can't grow a beard, just some patchwork tortoiseshell stubble. It's pathetic.

..I go over it with the beard trimmers on Sunday, and let it grow out to an almost full beard by Sat. Rinse and repeat. I hate shaving. Unfortunately, my beard starts just slightly below my eyes, so I can get rather hirsuite.

.... it's all the rage over in Voho donchaknow :-)

I've had mine for years tho. And can I reassure any hirsute wannabes: the trained beard requires minimum maintenance (once or twice-weekly trim) and is only itchy until established. Or if you let it grow too long.

Sadly, despite advanced years, I still can't grow hair on the side of my face so any beard attamept only results in a goatee (and a v.thin one at that). Used only to annoy the wife on holiday.

Sadly, despite advanced years, I still can't grow hair on the side of my face so any beard attamept only results in a goatee (and a v.thin one at that). Used only to annoy the wife on holiday.

I'm bearded, though I keep it very trim. Echoing a couple of comments above, shaving does leave me sore. Plus I'm a bit pale, so Mrs Presentable reckons I should keep it so that I "don't look ill"!

...that it was becoming so high-maintenance, so exquisitely carved, that the actor attached to it could afford less and less time to actually appear in the episodes until, inevitably, he had to quit.

I have the most magnificent anal beard.