"Room 101"

Things I really hate. Number One: Other People's Greasy Hair

Good God, if there really is one thing that turns my stomach it's other people's greasy hair. Now I've heard that not washing your hair is actually quite good for you. After a couple of months your hair goes through greasy and comes out the other end a beautiful, natural free-flowing mane. However, in that time, you've got to go around looking and smelling like a goat.

But it's not having greasy hair per se that gets my goat. It's what they leave behind. It always happens when I get on a bus or a train - I sit down in a window seat, and instead of a lovely view of the English countryside whizzing past, I get a faceful of somebody else's grease. Sometime's there's enough goo to fry an egg. And you can't wipe it off either, just spread it around, leaving an even bigger smear and a filthy blob on the sleeve on your coat.

It's even worse in banks and ticket offices where there's a security screen where the grease-heads can lean themselves against the glass. And if they're concentrating really hard on the difficult bit of their signature, they smear it about leaving something nasty, and quite possibly alive for the next poor bugger. I know. I used to work in an unemployment office, and I can tell you that from the inside it's just about the biggest gross-out you can get, and usually with the smell to match.

At the risk of over-indulgence, here's a little extract from the forthcoming book "Colin and the Dog" to illustrate the evils of bad hair.

The smear grew on the perspex screen at head height where claimant after claimant rested their head as they struggled with the complexities of their own name. Head after unwashed, unemployed head rested against the glass inches in front of Colin’s face as he watched in horror, the smear spreading like an oil slick, until he could no longer make out the faces on the other side. By the time the last of them had shuffled out of the building at lunchtime, Margaret Thatcher herself could have come in and signed on (a fantasy shared by at least three million of her unemployed masses) and Colin wouldn’t have recognised her. She would have been at the wrong window anyway. Colin signed the people whose surnames began with “W”.

Scabby hair. Number one item in the Scaryduck Room 101. Plenty more to come in a list which may or may not include Alan Titchmarch.

God bless ya, Maurice Gibb, I had my first smoochie slow-dance-with-a-girl to you. "How deep is your love?" you sung. Now we know. Six feet. I'll get me coat.

Oh yes. Birmingham City 0-4 Arsenal. La La La La.

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