The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-01)

The Sunday Times May 1, 2022 23

NEWS REVIEW

I

once saw Fergie — Sarah, Duchess

of York — in Nicky Clarke’s Mayfair

salon, sailing past the signed photo-

graph of Anthea Turner to take the

seat next to mine, graciously

accepting the tea offered in a porce-

lain cup. Clarke cut David Bowie’s

hair, and George Michael’s, and

Margaret Thatcher’s. But last week,

more than 30 years after his

gilt-edged salon opened, Clarke shut it

down, citing financial woes precipitated

by lockdown and diminished central

London footfall. A cut from the man him-

self cost about £650.

It’s a shame, and not just because of all

the brilliant stylists and colourists who

will now need new professional homes.

It’s also because Clarke — with his

improbable Bee Gee flick and his client

Rolodex bulging with household names —

was possibly the last living relic of a less

innocent era, when hairdressers were

creative renegades, helping to define the

counter-culture, while simultaneously

indulging in all its delights — the sex, the

drugs — and in the process becoming

more famous than their clients.

One of the first stars was Leonard

Lewis — Leonard of Mayfair — who trained

with the original London hair titan, Vidal

Sassoon, but soon eclipsed his master. In

the 1960s he launched Twiggy’s career by

giving the 16-year-old model a new short

hairstyle and went on to cut the hair of

the Beatles, John F Kennedy, Jerry Hall,

Audrey Hepburn and Joan Collins. Twice

a Miss World judge, he was a famous phi-

landerer who enjoyed debauched trips to

Las Vegas with his friends Tony Curtis

and Frank Sinatra, and was said to drink a

bottle of vodka a day.

It was in Lewis’s salon that hairdress-

ers such as Daniel Galvin, John Frieda

and Nicky Clarke trained. And so did my

father, Gavin Hodge. Perhaps in homage

to his boss, my dad, on being sent to do

the hair at the Queen Charlotte’s Ball, an

annual event for debutantes, eloped with

the heiress Jayne Harries. They spent

their honeymoon with the Rolling Stone

Brian Jones in Morocco, then back in Lon-

don crashed newly purchased Jaguars

and acquired a heroin addiction.

After their divorce (and Harries’s

death from an overdose), Dad sold his life

story to the News of the World. Nick-

named “the shampoo seducer”, he

claimed to have slept with 2,000 women

a year, which was impressive, consider-

ing how many drugs he was taking.

Despite a brief period in rehab, Dad

A nude testicle-tanning

enthusiast, left, is shown

on a trailer for a show by

Tucker Carlson, below

As the hairdresser Nicky Clarke shuts up

shop, Gavanndra Hodge recalls the crazed

heyday of the celebrity snipper — including

her own philandering, heroin-addict father

I

t is the question on

everyone’s lips, or at least

on those of “real men”

who feel that women have

for too long dominated the

market for wacky wellness

treatments of dubious

scientific merit: should I tan

my testicles?

Yes, testicle tanning, aka

red-light therapy, a hitherto

little-known practice that

involves blasting one’s balls

with red or near-infrared light

in the hope it might boost

testosterone levels.

Earlier this month, Tucker

Carlson, the US right-wing

Fox News presenter, revealed

a trailer for The End of Men, a

documentary about a real but

overblown dip in male

testosterone production.

After slow-mo shots of

muscled men grilling meat,

chopping wood and,

bizarrely, milking a cow

without collecting the milk, a

personal trainer from Ohio

tells Carlson — who to be fair

does look quite good for his

52 years — about a solution

that is definitely “not crazy”.

Cut to a scene of a naked

man standing on a rock, legs

apart, submitting to some

kind of light-emitting bollard.

Was he attempting to scan his

penis at a supermarket self-

checkout, one viewer

wondered, or had he been

caught in flagrante with a

Tesla charging station?

Either way — and needless

to say — doctors are not

impressed. “What is testicle

tanning?” asks Asif Muneer, a

consultant urological surgeon

and andrologist, adding later:

“There is no scientific

evidence that this has any

benefit.”

The idea of testicle tanning

as a hormonal pick-me-up

emerged in a hopelessly

flawed study of five men in

1939, and no improvement

has since been made in the

literature. But that’s beside

the point — because this is not

about roasted nuts.

The trainer tells Carson

about “bromeopathy”, or

alternative medicine for men

“who don’t trust mainstream

information”. Women have

faced this kind of marketing

for years; where would

Gwyneth Paltrow be, after all,

had she not promoted jade

vagina eggs and steam

douches via her Goop

Brown, who spent lockdown with Kate

Moss. Others are tight-lipped about their

famous customers, and some, such as

Richard Ward, hairdresser to the Duch-

ess of Cambridge, publish a huge list of

their high-profile clients on their website,

like an alumni page.

Still, a celebrity clientele could not

save Clarke, whose roster — Gwyneth

Paltrow, Elton John, Naomi Campbell —

felt a bit dated. “The rock’n’roll hair-

dressers are gone,” says Long.

And these days people seem to be

more excited about beauty hacks on Tik-

Tok, even if these are just a reinvention of

techniques that stylists have been using

for years. “Like the Olaplex bun,” says

Moodie. “That’s nothing new, they’ve

just given it a new name. Hairdressers

have always recommended that women

use conditioner on long hair and wrap it

in a bun to protect it from the sun.”

There is also a wider problem: more

than 6,000 salons have shut in the UK

since the pandemic started. “Hairdress-

ing as an industry is in massive decline,”

says Vial. “For some reason parents don’t

want their children to become hairdress-

ers, which is extraordinary, because

when I think of my life, the things I’ve

done, the people I’ve met, the places I’ve

gone, that has all been because of hair.”

So perhaps we need to reintroduce the

fun back into salons, and perhaps stylists

need to regain their swagger. Our hair

needs them.

Gavanndra Hodge’s memoir, The

Consequences of Love, is published by

Michael Joseph

US clinicians have classified

prolonged grief as a disorder.

Are we medicalising a natural

part of life, asks Martha Gill

Their masculinity under threat, men

are turning to some very alternative

treatments — including tanning their

testicles, discovers Simon Usborne

lifestyle brand?

But it’s different with guys,

and particularly on the right

side of the political spectrum,

where men seem to be

anxious to regain control of

their physiques and identity

in an era of shifting gender

norms, superheroes with

feelings and pesky know-all

scientists. There are echoes in

Carlson’s film of President

Trump’s widely ridiculed

suggestion that disinfectant

and, yes, ultraviolet light

might “kill Covid in one

minute”.

“There’s a softer

masculinity now, and it

makes the old masculinity

look like the odd man out,”

says Matt “The Pillar” Miller,

a former American footballer

who launched Broga (high-

intensity yoga classes) in

London ten years ago.

Excluded men, he adds, are

Shockwaves

can increase

blood flow

now “opening up and saying,

‘Oh, I’m going to try this to be

better’.”

A couple of years ago,

“Jawzrsize” balls went viral in

gyms and, one suspects, the

basements of parents still

dreaming of an empty nest.

The silicon chews are

designed to exercise the

muscles that, when pumped,

offer that attractive

constipated lantern-jawed

bodybuilder look.

Why not blast soundwaves

“The man version of

wellness is a kind of

biohacking,” says Will Cole, a

US practitioner in alternative

“functional medicine” and a

presenter of Goopfellas,

Goop’s podcast for men.

Biohacking is a kind of DIY

approach to physical

improvement that might

involve tech or any potion

short of actual snake oil.

“It all feels like a resistance

to change and an uncertainty

about the diversification of

gender in society,” says Kitty

Nichols, a sociologist at the

University of Sheffield who

has written papers on the

“reassertion of the

hegemonic man” in Love

Island, and the role of banter

in a rugby club. “There is still

this idea that lingers in

society of a manly man.”

At the darker end of that

idea is the far right. The Hope

Not Hate campaign warned

only last month that online

fitness groups are being used

as recruitment centres.

Treatment and training tips

are a gateway pill for fascist

propaganda.

These groups also use the

pejorative terms “soy boy”,

“cuck” and “beta” to refer to

“unmanly” men, while also

accusing them — and modern

liberal society more broadly

— of being “low-T”, or lacking

in testosterone. There were

no reports, so far at least, of

any testicles being tanned.

at your knackers? Shockwave

therapy is in growing demand

as a non-invasive treatment

for erectile dysfunction. It

apparently strengthens blood

vessels, improving blood flow

(there is at least some

evidence behind this one).

There’s soaring demand,

meanwhile, for testosterone

replacement therapy, as well

as “male enhancement pills”

with names such as Semenax

and VigRX. Ingredients in

these supposed erection aids

include pomegranate extract

and cordyceps, an

aphrodisiac fungus that lives

on Chinese caterpillars.

It’s all part of a wider male

quest for this idea of latent

virility. Men are lining up for

hair and beard transplants,

teeth aligners, penis fillers,

nose jobs and anti-wrinkle

injections inevitably branded

as “brotox”.

Dude, this ‘bromeopathy’ is just nuts

Can grief

become

a mental

illness?

psychotherapist and author

of Every Family Has a Story:

How We Inherit Love and Loss.

“You might think, ‘This is

who I am now,’ and imprison

yourself in the diagnosis.”

Samuel worries sufferers

might stop trying to make

themselves better with non-

medical interventions such as

seeing friends and exercising.

“Another risk of a medical

diagnosis is that other people

might stay away, worried that

if they don’t say the right

thing they’ll make you worse.

The word ‘disorder’ is so

pejorative: it tells you you’re

not coping, and it tells others

they’re not qualified to help.”

Critics of the DSM’s

definition say that, as grief is

different for everyone, there

can be no clear line

separating “disordered”

mourners from the rest.

Some, like Samuel, fear a

diagnosis could make things

worse for the sufferer,

producing stigma and

perhaps even pushing people

towards unnecessary

medication. The official

diagnosis allows US clinicians

to charge patients’ insurance

companies for treatment and

opens a potentially lucrative

field for drug companies

(naltrexone, a drug used in

addiction to block the effects

of opioids, is being tested as a

treatment for grief ).

Lucy Foulkes, an honorary

lecturer in psychology at

University College London

and author of Losing Our

Minds: What Mental Illness

Really Is — and What It Isn’t,

thinks that while there are

benefits to the new diagnosis,

it could be swept up in an

unhelpful trend. “In cultural

conversation we have

expanded lots of medical

definitions to include normal

human emotions. PTSD, OCD,

depression, bipolar disorder:

these are now being co-opted

by people who don’t need the

diagnosis. It almost doesn’t

matter what careful criteria

you write in the DSM — once

you unleash the idea of

prolonged grief into popular

consciousness, people will

start to diagnose themselves.”

But those who support the

DSM’s decision emphasise

the seriousness of the illness,

which can lead to suicide,

and the fact that treatments

exist and have been proven to

help. “There’s always a

danger people will

mistakenly diagnose

themselves with any illness,”

says Jennifer Wild, a

consultant psychologist at

Oxford University. “They can

always go to a doctor and get

a proper assessment.”

Prolonged grief, she

argues, is not “natural” — it

could be a hijacking of the

natural grief process, the

point at which it “gets stuck”.

She says it is clear something

is wrong with these patients,

and if we don’t “medicalise”

them with the right label,

they will be slapped with the

wrong one. “We see a lot of

prolonged grief disorder in

our patients who have been

referred for PTSD or

depression,” Wild says.

Foulkes sees a way through

the debate. “Whether we call

it a mental illness or not, the

key thing is to recognise that

some people are still suffering

very badly a long time after a

bereavement. And we should

help them where we can.”

A

fter Prince Albert died

in 1861, Queen Victoria

spent the rest of the

century in black and in

despair, determinedly

filling all the nation’s spare

corners with statues of her

beloved — so much so that by

1880 people had begun to

grow sick of the sight of

mustachioed bronzes. For

some, her grief was perfectly

natural — pious, even. Others

muttered that she had

psychological problems: a

form of “inherited

melancholy”, perhaps,

passed down from George III.

How long is too long to

grieve? More than a century

and a half after Albert’s

death, American psychiatrists

have come up with an

answer. A medics’ handbook

called The Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders (DSM) — one of two

publications used to diagnose

psychiatric illnesses the

world over — has added a new

disorder: prolonged grief. It

applies to those still intensely

yearning after and

preoccupied by a loved one

more than a year after they

have died, to the extent that it

interferes with normal life.

The diagnosis is

controversial. Grief is natural

in humans and even,

apparently, in animals. Going

through it is an existential

and social process, and

slapping a medical label on it

is, some say, like trying to

pathologise love. Is it ever

right to call grief an illness?

The diagnosis of prolonged

grief disorder has its roots in

the 1990s, in research by the

American psychiatric

epidemiologist Holly

Prigerson. She found that

while most people started to

recover after about six

months, a small group —

about 4 per cent — were stuck

in it for the long term.

The symptoms were

different from depression,

Prigerson proposed: there

were usually no feelings of

worthlessness, for example.

Instead, it was defined by

pining and craving,

numbness and the feeling of

having lost part of yourself.

More recent studies have

added to the description of

the illness: sufferers can feel a

physical aching for the lost

person and may obsessively

visit their grave or listen to

recordings of their voice again

and again. While the same

person can be both grieving

and depressed, clinical trials

have found therapies that

treat grief as a distinct entity

— more like a stress disorder

than a form of depression —

have been effective.

But not everyone in the

field of mental health thinks

the new diagnosis is helpful.

“The risk is that if someone is

told they have prolonged

grief, they will use it as a stick

to beat themselves with and

will end up feeling even more

stuck,” says Julia Samuel, a

It is the point

at which grief

gets ‘stuck’

overly friendly approach. Sassoon was

known as a ladies’ man, and Clarke had

an affair with the model Susie Bick.

“There always used to be that sexual

undercurrent in a salon,” says John Vial,

co-owner of Salon Sloane in Chelsea, who

trained with Sassoon and styled the hair

of the late architect Zaha Hadid. “What

straight guys quickly realised was that

being a hairdresser was a great way to get

women into bed.”

But really the point of the celebrity

hairdresser was not the drugs or the

sex but the celebrities. And a

celebrity client with a great hair-

cut can be a boon for business, as

Jonny Long, co-founder of Lock-

onego salon in Chelsea,

explains. He gives the example

of the “Pob”, the Posh Spice bob,

cut by Ben Cooke in his salon.

“That went mad. Everyone knew

that Victoria [Beckham] had had it

done here, we had people flying in

from America wanting that look.”

Some stylists become best friends

with their celebrity clients, such as James

Nicky Clarke,

main picture,

and with Anthea

Turner, right. Kate

Moss spent

lockdown with

James Brown, top,

and, above left,

Victoria Beckham

with Ben Cooke.

Below, Gavin

Hodge in 1968,

styling the hair

of his wife,

Jayne Harries

continued to indulge, and when I was a

teenager he sold cocaine to the aristo-

cratic clients who had their hair done at

his Knightsbridge salon.

“The craziest things I ever saw were at

your father’s salon,” says his former col-

league Neil Moodie, who has styled the

likes of Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Port-

man and Gigi Hadid for Vogue cover

shoots. He is about to open a new salon,

Neil Moodie Studio, and has a

podcast exploring themes

around mental health. “I

do think there used to

be an element of drug-

taking and hairdress-

ing that went

together. Perhaps it’s

about being a crea-

tive,” he says.

Indeed, Clarke

revealed in 2013 that he

had been a heroin addict

for over a year, only getting

clean after a stint in rehab. Dan-

iel Galvin Jr, the hairdresser son of Dan-

iel Galvin, who did Princess Diana’s hair

(for about £350), went to rehab for

cocaine addiction. His dad’s problem was

booze, although he says he was never

drunk during the day, unlike my dad,

who once snipped off a client’s earlobe

because he was pissed.

Dad liked to create a festive atmos-

phere in the salon, with alcohol and loud

rave music. He wasn’t the only one: in the

1980s and 1990s at Hari’s, Hari Salem’s

small chain of celebrity-filled salons, a

barman would push a cocktail trolley

round, serving clients cosmopolitans,

but that stopped because the staff were

getting too drunk.

Dad also wasn’t the only one with an

Sex and

drugs and

locks and

rollers

MIKE LAWN/SHUTTERSTOCK

Dad was

pissed

and once

snipped

off a client’s

earlobe