6 1GT Monday November 16 2020 | the times

D

on’t you just hate it

when the dishy guy

you met online with

the sexy smile and

the nifty selection

of baseball caps is

ultimately revealed,

in the flesh, to be a

big lying baldy! This, apparently, is

the nightmare facing 10 per cent of

Britons who responded to a recent

survey (by an online wellness and

nutrition brand) about the scandalous

modern dating practice known as

“hatfishing”. Yes, hatfishing. The

deliberate concealment of one’s

baldness, traditionally via hats and

caps (although a strategically placed

pillow or forearm also works) on

dating apps and websites to attract

prospective romantic partners.

The survey found that 40 per cent

of respondents, once aware of the

hatfishing scam (“You’re what?”),

would abandon any potential

dating plans. And who can

blame them? It’s not just

that he’s a liar, he’s also,

urghhhh (dry-retch

moment), bald! Like a

backstabbing version

of Patrick Stewart.

We men, however,

have known about

the hatfishing

phenomenon since long

before there was a name

for it. We’ve all been there.

A friend of ours will suddenly

take a strange stylistic lurch towards

the world of millinery, with a new and

unswerving devotion to beanies,

baseball hats and flat caps. Indoors

too. All the time, in fact. And we get

it immediately, but we never actually

sit them down and say: “Look, I

understand. It’s because you’re balding

and you don’t want to draw attention

to the fact that you’re balding by

drawing attention to the fact that

you’re balding by wearing a giant

woollen beanie, like some wannabe

Jamiroquai, during every single

passing minute of the day.”

And they’ll say it’s a fashion thing,

or a celebrity inspiration. Like a

homage to the cast of Peaky Blinders,

or a throwback to Ben Volpeliere-

Pierrot, the lead singer of Eighties

popsters Curiosity Killed the Cat,

who popularised the wearing of a

backwards fisherman’s cap. Volpeliere-

Kevin Maher

Cummings

and goings

— my take

Poor Dominic

Cummings. Resigning

isn’t easy at the best

of times, and I can

only imagine Boris

Johnson’s reaction

to the Cummings

bombshell. Probably

swore aloud and threw

some personal effects

across the room in

Downing Street.

I say this because I

only properly resigned

from a position once,

but it created a lasting

impression. It was the

early Nineties and,

while double-jobbing as

an aspiring film critic

by day and waiter by

night, I had been

promoted to the

position of assistant

restaurant manager

at a vibrant London

venue. So vibrant that,

during Christmas

1993, I made almost

£2,000 in tips and

felt it was time to

quit and concentrate

on journalism.

I dropped by the

restaurant after the

new year festivities, and

found the manager in

the office. His eyes lit

up when he saw me and

he began an excitable

speech about the

challenges ahead.

Mid-sentence I handed

him my resignation

letter. He took one look

at it, swore, and angrily

flung his clipboard

across the office. Nice

to know you’re wanted.

Eh, Dom?

Can you

dig it? Yes,

you can

all of humanity. But

I say dig away under

Stonehenge!

Campaigners are

claiming that the

proposed traffic-

relieving tunnel under

the dreaded A

“gateway” (ha!) to the

southwest might

damage precious

artefacts that need

careful preservation.

As someone who has

spent hours inching

along the A303 to

Cornwall, I can happily

say that even if the

bones of King Arthur,

Ethelred the Unready,

Bigfoot and Lord Lucan

were all discovered in

the soil, inside a great

big ceramic pot, they

should still charge

ahead with the dig.

Stick the artefacts

in a sack and keep

that traffic flowing.

King Arthur, who

still owns a holiday

home in Tintagel,

would approve.

Yes, it’s roughly 5,

years old. And yes, it’s

a significant site for

Pierrot was, it now transpires, simply

hiding his premature baldness, and

was thus hatfishing his entire (mostly

female) fanbase.

Other celebrity head-hiders are just

as guilty. Titanic’s Billy Zane was a

consistent proponent of the rakishly

slung farmer’s flat cap before he

eventually came out as a cue ball,

while the folically challenged film

director Matthew Vaughn (husband

of Claudia Schiffer) is seemingly

surgically wedded to his New York

Yankees baseball cap. I interviewed

him once in a swelteringly hot

summer hotel room, and although

I was practically down to a thong

by the end, his hat never moved.

He must really love that team.

Jude Law is another. Famously

thinning bonce, and boy does he

love a trilby! He has proved a terrible

role model for baldies-in-denial

everywhere. Because there are few

things more embarrassing than

the sight of your mate

walking into the pub

in a trilby. You want

to palm-slap your

own forehead and

scream: “Haven’t

you learnt anything?

You are literally

begging people to

focus on your head,

and to wonder why

you’ve decided to look

like a complete numpty

for the night!”

The tragic coda, alas, to this tale is

that my own hair, ever since hitting

40, has been consistently thinning and

I am now the owner of a genuine, if

modestly bearable, bald spot. And

my fashion solution? My hatfishing

process? Hoodies. Seriously. Hoodies

with the hood up. It’s ingenious. It

works like a charm, and doesn’t make

you look like an over-primped prat.

Plus, if anything, it gives you more

credibility points, and injects you with

some of that gritty street allure, like

a middle-aged drug dealer.

In any photograph that’s taken

of me now the hood’s always up,

and if I bothered to go on a dating

app (I’d have to ask my wife first),

that’s the look you’d get. I suppose,

ultimately, I’ve established a new kind

of social deception. It seems as if I

should call it hoodfishing, but really,

it’s hoodwinking.

If you’re a man who

wears a hat indoors, you

are not fooling anyone

The Crown:

How much of the hotly anticipated

fourth series reflects reality and how

much stretches the truth? The royal

historian Hugo Vickers gives his verdict

T

he fourth season of

The Crown stretches

from May 1979, when

Margaret Thatcher is

elected Britain’s first

female prime minister,

to Christmas 1990,

shortly after she has

been drummed out of office. Peter

Morgan, the show’s creator, tells us:

“We do our very, very best to get it

right, but sometimes I have to conflate

[incidents]... You sometimes have to

forsake accuracy, but you must never

forsake truth.” The forsaking of the

truth, the perverting and twisting

of known facts, is what has always

concerned me throughout this series.

It is about real people, often put into

fictional situations.

The main protagonists in season

four are Thatcher and the Prince and

Princess of Wales, clashed against

some of the other characters from

season three and earlier. This creates

a new problem for anyone watching it

since in both these relationships there

are numerous contradictions, there

has been much side-taking and it is

possible to slant things in a variety

of different ways. Nevertheless, even

having taken that into consideration,

there are established truths and

untruths. My conclusion on this series

is that it is yet more subtly divisive

than earlier seasons. Pretty much

every character is dislikeable. The

Queen is portrayed as glum and

schoolmistressly — quite unlike the

real Queen. The Queen Mother is

given some truly horrible lines;

Princess Margaret is downright

rude; Thatcher buttoned up. Diana

is the heroine of this series, largely

portrayed — in my view often unfairly

— as the victim of a heartless family.

Did Lord Mountbatten write Prince

Charles a letter urging him to

settle down, on the very day he

set out for his ill-fated boating

expedition at Mullaghmore?

FALSE

The Crown shows Lord Mountbatten

on holiday at Classiebawn Castle,

Co Sligo, on the morning of August 27,

1979, about to set off on a fishing trip

with his daughter and other members

of his family. He writes Prince Charles

a letter urging him to find “some sweet

and innocent, well-tempered girl with

no past” to settle down with, and to do

his duty. In reality, he wrote no such

letter that day.

He did, however, write to Prince

Charles on many other occasions

offering advice; many similar letters

exist. Mountbatten was by no means

a good influence. He urged Prince

Charles to “sow his wild oats” before

finding the unsullied girl. It’s also

true that Charles held Mountbatten

in high esteem. Mountbatten, it

should be noted, was blown up at

Mullaghmore by the IRA before Lady

Diana Spencer came on the scene.

Do the Queen and the royal family

lay secret protocol traps for hapless

visitors when they stay at Balmoral?

Did they apply this to Thatcher?

FALSE

The Queen and the royal family go

out of their way to make their guests

feel at ease at Balmoral. In real life,

Mr and Mrs Thatcher arrived at

the castle on Saturday, September 8,

1979, a mere three days after Lord

Mountbatten’s ceremonial funeral at

Westminster Abbey. No hint of that

in this episode of The Crown. It has

to be 1979 because clearly they have

never been before.

But unlike what is shown in

The Crown, there was no torturing

of Thatcher, no maids being

superciliously rude to her, no

wrong-footing in silly games, no

making her ill at ease for wearing the

wrong clothes or shoes, and no,

Thatcher did not plead pressure of

work in London and leave early.

In The Crown Diana too is invited

to Balmoral to be checked out and

succeeds and passes the tests, which

Thatcher failed. Diana’s visit was, in

fact, a year later, in 1980, and at a time

when the Queen was not there.

Was Thatcher out of place when

staying at Balmoral?

TRUE

Thatcher was not particularly

interested in country pursuits, but she

went to Balmoral quite happily for the

traditional stay by the prime minister

in the late summer of each year.

After the first Balmoral visit in

1979 her husband, Denis, wrote a

letter, later quoted by their daughter,

Carol: “There was a house party and

some of the people who’d been

shooting didn’t come in until later

and then there were more drinks —

because they’re very generous with

drink — and then we went in for

dinner. In their language it’s probably

very informal but nevertheless

you’re on tiptoe. There’s the usual

sort of after-dinner conversation over

coffee and then the Queen withdraws

fairly early.. .”

Were the royal family beastly

to Diana after her engagement,

accusing her of not knowing to

whom she should curtsey?

FALSE

We see Diana arriving at Buckingham

Palace and coming into a room

filled with the royal family and

bungling the curtseys. Princess

Margaret tears a strip off her and they

appear to mock her.

This is spiteful rubbish. Diana had

been brought up in the shadow of

Sandringham, at Park House. Her

two grandmothers and four great-

aunts were in the Queen Mother’s

household. Her father had been

equerry to the Queen on the 1953-

Commonwealth tour. She knew

precisely what to do.

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The tragic coda

times