for a while it was shoulder length and quite curly. I was told by a bloke I was chatting to in a pub that I looked like Syd Barrett. I was very pleased.

On a trip to London to meet my dad in early 82, I kept going by this barbers in Bayswater that had a pic of a man with a Terry Hall hair cut - and we're talking the plant-like Fun Boy Three years.

So I plucked up the courage to pop in and have said do. Sadly, it was a don't. Thinking back I looked like Sideshow Bob.

I sat in a photo-me booth in Queensway station for an hour and a half until I could bear to face the outside world. Then I put my head in the nearest puddle.

The next year I took a photo of Edwyn Collins into the hairdressers and that was much more of a success. Much more me.

Other inspirations: Nick Hayward, Jason Donovan, Morrissey, the bloke from The Farm and Noel Gallagher (but not now).

?

When I started to listen to The Beatles I was soon picked on for having a Beatle hair cut. Not that I had one, I had a mullet (it was the early nineties, after all). But listening to something NO ONE ELSE in the entire world was listening to was reason enough for trial at that age (10-12). "Weird crap music"? Oh, for the wisdom of preteens peer pressure.

After a while I realised that if I was going to get bullied for something I didn´t have I might as well just get it and get on with it. Thus started a long and sadly failed attempt at perfectioning a McCartney 66. Never quite pulled the volume of the fringe off. That was the hard part, combing it over the ears was the easy part.

I still occasionally dream about mastering that thing Harrison wears on the cover of For Sale. That little thing on the top? Genius!

Or ANY of the dos on Rubber Soul.

I sported a voluminous quiff in the mid-to-late eighties. I can't see myself ever putting so much effort into doing my hair again.

Edinburgh, 1991. Number 1 back and sides but kept the floppy fringe. Thought I looked like Edwyn Collins. I didn't. The Polish barber on Marchmont Road got so annoyed at my stupid haircut that he sliced the fringe off. Probably a wise move.

Rome, 1994. The hair is now shoulder-length and, with my wire-frame glasses, I look like a passable Lennon impersonator. I'm sitting on a bench near the Spanish Steps and am approached by a gang of young Italians. They point at me. 'Jim Morryzonn' they say, 'Iss Jim Morryzonn.' I hate bloody Jim Morryzonn so cut the damned thing off soon after.

It was loooooong. Robert Plant like and then It was gone (sob).

I tried this as a teenager:

I was aiming for interestingly unkempt. I just looked like a tramp. God knows what it'd look like now, eighteen years and about five stone later.

At uni, I briefly tried this, with the rather excellent DJ in mind.

Needless to say, it went alarmingly orange (my natural hair colour is very dark brown, nearly black, and self-applied bleach jobs apparently don't work on that). You could've used me to signal shipping. And then the ship's crew would've come ashore and beaten me up for looking like a tit.

My mate's had a Michael Stipe for several years....

Dave Hill's hairdo never catch on?

*snigger*

Now it's more of a homage to The Monks

... Moby, Eno, Stipe... Went bald extremely young and heavily missed out. Boy did I want an Ian Brown in that late eighties/ early nineties...

to try and cultivate a Phil Oakey, but my hair was sadly not up to it. Similar story in my pathetic attempt to emulate Nick Cave circa Birthday Party.
However I had far more success with my 84 Mozza cut, so much so that I was actually mistook for the man in the Manchester Virgin Megastore, hard to believe now

had a Ramones as a sixth former but then a run of early Elvis, army Elvis, Morrissey, floppy Edwyn, up Edwyn.
I used to like playing with my hair.