Tuesday 30 March 2010

Chelsea Football Club

After posting about captain John Terry, Ashley Cole and Joe Cole, and taking into account the individuals below, it seems there is something foul in the air over at Stamford Bridge, with a large proportion of their players suffering from hair loss.



Peter Cech usually hides his receding hairline under that bizarre helmet.



Ricardo Carvalho, who is rumoured to have had a hair transplant.



Here he is more recently.



Michael Essien, receding.



Jose Bosingwa, receding but ironically sports a unibrow.



Alex, receding.



Nicolas Anelka, hides his baldness by shaving his head.

So that is 9 out of 20 or so first team members that are noticeably balding in some way, which seems quite a high percentage. In time I will compare this with other football teams, and I'm sure you will agree that the results will be fascinating.

So for now anyway, I hereby name Chelsea Football Club the most balding team in the English Premier League.

Norwood Rating - 2-3

Michael Stipe

In the early days of R.E.M. Michael Stipe had long, quite wavy hair. Being quite a shy bloke, he would sometimes hide behind it while singing.



It must have been quite distressing for him then when around the age of 30, he started to go bald. During this time, the early 90s, he took to wearing a variety of hats to cover it up, but this didn't really fool anybody.



He eventually shaved it all off in 1994, and it has given him a distinct, instantly recognisable look.



Unfortunately his new look added fuel to the scurrilous rumours that Stipe had AIDS.
Of course, just because someone has a completely bald head, it doesn't mean they have AIDS, or cancer etc.



As an ambassador for the completely bald head, Stipe has done a sterling job in helping the look become more acceptable. Back in the early 90s not many people sported the shaved dome and hairstyles for balding men were limited and often involved combovers.

Norwood Rating : 6

Friday 26 March 2010

Billy Corgan

I remember when Corgan first burst onto the scene as a fresh faced, long haired youngster. I like the odd Smashing Pumpkins song here and there, but generally find his nasally whine quite grating so was never a fan.



As they gained some commercial success Corgan's hair started thinning out a fair bit, and he ended up having it quite short. This wasn't really noticeable to the untrained eye though.



At the height of his bands success, Corgan shaved his head in a brave move as if to pre-empt his approaching baldness. "I just got so sick of worrying about appearance that by shaving my hair completely, de-emphasizes the way I look."



Back in 1995 it was fairly unusual for a person of his profile to go completely bald. The only other white frontmen I can think of that did it were Scott Ian of Anthrax and Rob Halford of Judas Priest. Michael Stipe also shaved his head a year or so previously.



Norwood Rating : 5a

Wednesday 24 March 2010

James Nesbitt

James Nesbitt is a Northern Irish actor who is a familiar face on British tv screens.



Back in the year 2000 he spoke candidly about his hair loss in an interview with The Independent, a newspaper.
"It's a great sign of mortality, the old hair," says Nesbitt, who is appalled by his rate of recession. "It's going, it's going... My dad has a thick head of hair, which is very irritating. It's not fair!"



"I use this stuff now that a French laboratory has produced for people with money: you spray it on. And I take vitamins. It's a terrible obsession."
I don't know what product he is talking about but it sounds like Haircubed or something like that.



He wore a wig for his role in 'Jekyll' as these pictures for the Radio Times show. The use of hair pieces is widespread in the acting profession, and they are often undetectable.



Anyway some time after this, probably around 2007, he appears to have had a hair transplant. It was probably done using the FUE procedure which is less invasive than the strip method and leaves less scarring at the donor area around the back of the head.



When the Daily Mail newspaper ran a story on this, they used 2 'after' shots to illustrate his 'transformation', which shows their lack of research and knowledge on the subject. The Evening Standard did a similar thing and used the picture above. You can clearly see that his new grafted hair is in the process of growing in. Below is a picture taken before he had the procedure done.



Update : Nesbitt had his procedures done at the The Blackrock Clinic in Ireland. It looks like they did a good job, and he is obviously happy with the results. He has made a promotional video, which can be seen on their website.

Norwood Rating : 3

Sunday 21 March 2010

Joe Cole

Congratulations to Joe Cole who became a father a few days ago! This will hopefully take his mind off his baldness problem, which has manifested itself in a monk like patch at the crown.


I remember noticing this appearing a few years ago but now even non baldness obsessed people can see it.


It has developed slowly over time and I think finasteride and minoxidil would probably halt it's progress.


A technically very gifted footballer, it is no surprise that Mr Cole has been compared to the great Zinedine Zidane.


Norwood Rating : 2

Monday 15 March 2010

Will Young

Will Young was 23 when he won the first UK Pop Idol television show/contest in 2002. Here he is during the week that he won.



Even back then I remember thinking that he was receding a bit. You can see this in his audition video below.



2 years later in 2004 his hair loss was progressing as expected.



I'm not sure what the hell is going on here.



By 2005 it seemed as though he had accepted his fate and decided to shave his head.



Unusually for a celebrity, he is quite open about his hair loss and admits to taking propecia. His hair loss certainly seems to have improved somewhat since 2005.



To be honest though, I'm not convinced he hasn't had a small transplant too. He has denied having 'plugs', but this is an old method not used so much any more. So he's not necessarily lying, just maybe bending the truth a little. Here he is earlier this year.



Some people reckon he has a hairpiece but I don't agree with that.
Anyway, I feel Mr. Young should be applauded for his partial honesty. Well done Sir.

Norwood Rating : 2

Ben Affleck

The hair of 37 year old Mr. Affleck has been the subject of much debate for around a decade now.



He has always had thick dark hair which can look a bit wig-like anyway.



The Secretly Balding Moviestars website has been around for as long as I can remember, and was where this infamous photo of his hairline first surfaced. It does look suspiciously like a hairpiece.



He had a strange haircut in Shakespeare in Love, and some people have used this as an example of his changing hairline. However, it seems obvious to me that his hair has purposefully been styled in this way for cinematic reasons and should therefore be discounted as evidence.



Internet folklore says that Vince Vaughan pulled off his hairpiece while horsing around at a party. I believe this rumour started on the imdb message board around 2002. He denied this on the Jay Leno show, and pulled at his hair as if to prove it were real. However, this would prove nothing as the bonding methods used in modern hairpieces are very strong and will withstand a lot of stress.



He has had a variety of different hairstyles over the years so I am not sure what to think. But more recently his hair has been quite short, and I'm not sure whether it is possible to get a hairpiece this length.



Anyway he now has a significant bald patch forming, as this candid photo from late 2008 shows. He also has very short hair exposing what appears to be his natural hairline.





But where has it gone? In this more recent picture, it is only ever so slightly visible. He has probably either used medication like propecia and minoxidil, covered it with a concealer like Toppik or Dermmatch, or most likely a combination of both.



The high resolution image below was taken at the premiere of 'He's just not that into you' in 2009. There is no sign of a lace wig mesh, and the photo is so detailed you can even see where individual hairs are growing from if you are that way inclined. Click here to see it in full detail.



My personal theory on Mr. Affleck is that he may have employed a hairpiece in the early 2000s for certain roles while taking treatments for hair loss. As those treatments started taking effect, his hair loss was stopped to the extent that a wig was no longer needed, and what you are seeing now is his natural hair.

Norwood Rating : 2

Paul Simon

This is not a particularly interesting one but I felt I should mention him after writing about his musical partner, Art Garfunkel.



Paul Simon started going bald in his 20s, and by the 1970s he was employing some combover type hairstyles.



This baffling hairstyle was popular with balding men and a common sight in that decade.



Below, at the 1975 Grammy awards with Bowie, Garfunkel, Yoko Ono and John Lennon.



For his 1980 'comeback' One Trick Pony, he appeared to have a full head of hair again, and it is generally acknowledged by his fans that this was down to a toupee.



He carried on wearing for a long while after this but stopped sometime in the mid 90s.



Norwood Rating : 5-6

Tuesday 9 March 2010

Prince William

The 27 year old is second in line to the English throne, and has been losing hair at an alarming rate over the past few years.



There has been some controversy over Hello magazine's cover photograph, taken by Jeff Hubbard and overseen by Rankin, in which he appears to have a full head of thick black hair.



Everyone knows he is severely balding, so I am not sure why they have done this. Maybe Rankin felt sorry for him. Hello claim that the photo is a piece of 'artwork' therefore it is the norm to use digital effects.



I would be interested in seeing the other pictures inside the magazine for comparison, but sadly that would mean paying for the magazine which I am not prepared to do.



Anyway despite my hatred for the Royal Family it is hard not to feel sorry for Prince William as he seems a genuinely nice chap. Most men would just shave their heads in his position but I don't think the palace would be keen on having a skinhead Prince.



Norwood Rating : 3-4v