NEARLY £290million was spent last year across the world on baldness treatments.

NEARLY £290million was spent last year across the world on baldness treatments.

Here in the UK, £6m-a-year is spent on trying to re-grow hair, with two thirds of men suffering from male pattern baldness.

Evening Times writer Brian Beacom was one of them. Now he's had a hair transplant and has written a book to share his hair recovery story with the world.

I'D been worrying about baldness since the age of seven. Honestly. Just after the classic POW movie The Great Escape came out, I set off, along with my pal, Tommy McCafferty, to get a Steve McQueen-style crew cut.

I sat there on the barber's chair (or rather on the plank of wood he used to give small boys added height), waiting to be transformed into the baseball-bouncing Cooler King' Captain Virgil Hilts.

But barber Malky Kerr had other ideas.

"Sorry, you're hair's too thin for a crew cut, son."

"Eh?"

"No can do."

The look on my face betrayed my utter disappointment. I wanted to look like Steve. I wanted to look American.

"I'll give you a normal hair cut," said Malky, placatingly.

And he did give me the normal short back and sides. But, and here's where the real ignominy came into play, Tommy was then lifted onto the chair, the electric razor pulled out and a fine crew cut administered. All for 2s 6d.

And then, to add insult to injury, Malky turned to Tommy and said; "You'll never have to worry about going bald, son. Not with a head of hair like that."

To be honest, I didn't want to have hair like Tommy's. It was Post Office van red. And it was bristly, like a new lavatory brush. But at least he could have a McQueen. He would never go bald like Yul Brynner.

And me?

My fear was born.

I'd wanted to be a journalist since I was a kid and discovered that Superman's alter ego Clark Kent was a reporter. But at the same time I learned his arch enemy Lex Luthor was bald. And I realised that bald guys in comics were almost always the bad guys.

And good guys always have hair in movies, too, but Bond baddies Odd-Job and Blofeld were egg-heads.

Even cartoons depicted baldies as baddies. Elmer Fudd was bald, shotgun-toting psychopath who spent his life trying to blow Bugs Bunny's brains out.

So I grew up believing that bald was bad. And bald guys never, ever, got the girls.

My thoughts on hair became more polarised when, at the age of 22, my bald pal Sparky bought himself a wig.

Sparky was just like John Wayne. He didn't want the world to know he was bald. But I soon learned that wigs don't stand up to close scrutiny.

And so my fear continued. Everyday I watched more of my crowning glory vanish down the plughole. I'd become a statistic, one of the two-thirds of men who are either bald or close to it by the age of 60.

Then one day last year I knew I had to take action. As I stood in the garage to pay for petrol I received a fright. No, not at the price per litre. A glance at the CCTV camera revealed the true picture. The phrase hair parting' had taken on new meaning. My thick, dark, David Cassidy hair was, like the Seventies, long gone.

What to do? A close pal, an actor, had had a weave. Like Elton. It looked great. But I could feel the plastic ridge into which the hairs are inserted. And it cost £60 a month for maintenance'. I didn't like the idea of being maintained.

So I looked for a solution. There are lots on the market. Drugs like Rogaine and Propecia, Another pal revealed he's been using Finasteride. It's working. He doesn't have much more hair, but it's thicker.

Yet, I needed a more immediate, more dramatic result. I searched the net. A company in Mexico were offering to re-regrow your own hair using stem cells. At a cost of $30,000. But there's another price to pay. Side effects. Reports claim the stem-celled hair will grow in one colour only - white - and in any direction it chooses.

I didn't want to look like Don King.

But what about a transplant? I was unsure. Over the years I'd looked closely at both Elton and John Cleese. But none looked acceptable. Had transplants come of age?

And all the website comments said the same thing; transplants can go wrong. You HAVE to get the right surgeon.

I spoke to one of the UK's top trichologists for independent advice. He recommended his own transplant surgeon', which didn't sound that independent to me.

And so I called a few more clinics, and spoke to lots of sales people who all promised they could restore my hair - without having seen my head.

Then, a breakthrough. I spoke to Clydebank-born TV Dragon Duncan Bannatyne.

"You should go and see Dr Farjo," he said with a knowing look.

And I did.

But could he give me back my David Cassidy hair?

Brian Beacom's new book Diary of a Hair Transplant: A Journalist's Search For David Cassidy Hair is available now at diaryofahairtransplant.com, published by Phantom Publishing UK, price £6.99.

You can read an exclusive extract right here...

Chapter One

Peek A Boo Hair

APRIL 30, 2008. HT Day. Hair Transplant Day.

IT'S 7.15am. I'm on a train to Manchester, staring out of the window and into the past.

I love this city. It reminds me of university days and going to the football with my pal Brendan from Stretford.

More poignantly, it reminds me of an ex called Julie who had wavy blond peek-a-boo hair and looked like a Forties film star.

Ah, Julie. It's no surprise she finds herself cut and pasted back onto the memory page at this very moment.

She once predicted, (showing a rare sign of insensitivity) that my David Cassidy-like locks would be gone by my late twenties. I was 22 at the time and this was not what I wanted to hear at all. Bald? I couldn't bear the thought of it. Baldness, after all, had a negative association.

I wanted to become a journalist since I was a kid and discovered that Superman's alter ego Clark Kent was a reporter. But at the same time I learned his arch enemy and world destroyer Lex Luthor was bald. And I realised that bald guys in comics were almost always the bad guys.

And movies of course.James Bond wore a wig, because good guys always have hair, but Odd-Job and Blofeld were egg-heads.

Cartoons also depicted bald people as being baddies.

Little Elmer Fudd was bald, a shotgun-armed psychopath who spent his life trying to blow Bugs Bunny's brains out.

But most importantly, in fiction and in life, bald guys never, ever, got the girls. Was I set to lose out on the wavy-haired Julies of this world?

The flashback is halted by the halting of the train. Now, I'm stepping off and into a bright, vibrant Piccadilly Station.

And I feel wonderful. And anxious. Why this oxymoronic state? Well, I'm about to undergo hair transplant surgery that will give me a covering on my head that I haven't had for years.

Today is the day I get new hair. Well, not new hair. It's old hair actually, but it will be moved - like Pickfords, but with follicles - from the back of my head to a new home on my scalp.

Yet, at the same time I'm trepidatious. Not so much at the idea of surgery, the thought of pain or the sight of swelling, because I have real faith in the doctor carrying out the procedure. But because I'm not entirely convinced that it will all work out as it's supposed to. I've done all my research, and I feel I've made the right choice of transplant surgeon. However, I've also spent years reading about the hair transplants that have gone horribly wrong.

Or even just not quite turned out right.

Will my new hair grow in the right direction? Will the hairline look natural? What if, after thirty years of dreaming about having new hair, the results turn out to be a nightmare and I'm left with nothing?

I don't get the chance to dwell on this thought because the train has stopped and I'm off and walking towards the barrier.

On the other side is Mick, the hair clinic's manager. And I'm glad he's met me because he's a no-nonsense, likeable bloke in his forties with a reassuring smile.

"How did you sleep," he says, enquiring of my hotel stay the night before. Unfortunately I'd chosen to come down to Manchester on a day United were playing Barcelona and there was more chance of me getting a game for them than finding a hotel room in the city.

As a result, I'd had to opt for a hotel in Crewe, conveniently, next to the train station.

"I slept well," I said. "The gentle thunder of the trains that ran right underneath the hotel had a strangely soporific effect. In fact, I must sleep directly above 300wt of moving diesel more often."

He laughed and so did I. We both knew it was good to get the day off on a smile. But I was still unsure. What if we get to the clinic and the old hair won't want to be repositioned? What if Dr Farjo, the man whose hands my head will soon be placed in, discovers a problem and decides my skull isn't suitable for shifting hair around on after all?

Yes, my hair has been falling out for the longest time.

I've known for some time I would be a statistic, one of the forty per cent of men who suffer from male pattern baldness by the age of thirty-five. And I'm determined to halt the hair loss process. But will the result be as exciting as the last few months of expectation?

Of course it will,' I tell myself.

As we step into the Manchester sunshine I look for a sign. Any sign that will convince me this will all work out in the end. And just as we make our way in the direction of Chorlton Street, a tram passes. And on the tram is a giant shampoo ad.

That'll do,' I think, smiling.

Two minutes later and we are in the lift in a very swish building making our way up to the Sixth Floor. Inside, the clock in the reception area reveals it's just 7.30am, but already the place is a hive of industry. Mick leaves me in reception to wait a few moments until he has a chat with Dr Farjo.

I had been in the Farjo Clinic before, for the initial consultation five months ago. But because of all the excitement going on in my head I realised I hadn't picked up on detail; a bit like viewing a house for the first time.

This time around my eye catches the Before and After pics on the wall. And I realise one of the blokes looks familiar. He should. It's Mick. Ten years ago, I later discover, Mick had hair like mine is today; thin and patchy and not long for the world that is the top of my head. But today Mick has hair. A pretty good head of hair at that. I take this as Another Sign. A really good sign.

"Dr Farjo will see you now," calls out Mick, who is walking into the reception area.

And I move through the corridors, into Bessam Farjo's office where I'm alone for a couple of minutes. Again, I get to take in the view of the walls. And this time around I see they are covered in framed certificates, with memberships of world-wide hair transplant organisations, with details of conferences and seminars attended.

Dr Farjo has a list of accreditations that are a long as Rapunzel's hair. It's obvious this is a man who knows hair replacement.

This is Another Good Sign.

"Hi, how are you?" says the cheery Iraq-born doctor who will relocate my hair to a far happier place. And now we're chatting, about my trip down from Glasgow, about Manchester United's win. And about the upcoming procedure.

And he's telling me how straight-forward it will all be.

Now, some doctors don't instil confidence. I remember once going to hospital with a knee problem and being addressed by a young locum who wore ankle-height cream trainers, a grubby t-shirt and spoke to me through a runny nose which he wiped episodically with the sleeve of his tatty white coat. He told me I had Housewife's Knee.

But because of his appalling presentation I wouldn't have believed him if he produced an actual eighty year-old for comparison purposes.

Dr Farjo however has a reassuring manner.

"Take these pills," he says, offering a clutch of small blue tablets which he says are anti-infection agents, and one white one.

"The Valium is to make you really feel relaxed."

Half an hour later I most certainly am. And I'm in the clinic relaxing in a large leather reclining chair, the sort British Airways charge three grand for on a First Class long haul flight. I'm laying back facing a big plasma screen and listening to the laid-back Terry Wogan on the radio. Considering what's about to happen to me, and the importance of it all, I'm amazingly laid-back.

This is way, way better than a day in a busy newspaper office,' I say to myself. And so far, it's true.

Dr Farjo re-covers what he explained before in my consultation meeting about what the procedure would involve.

During the course of the day a strip will be removed from the back of my head, dissected into follicular units - groups of hairs - and those units inserted into my scalp.

And this process will carry on most of the day, but there will be a break for lunch, and I can order up a sandwich and drink. It all sounds fine. I'm then told there are a selection of recent movies to watch or, for the moment, I can listen to Terry Wogan on the radio. Ah, Tel. The gentle voice that introduces gentle music to genteel people.

And I listen and become even more relaxed.

Meanwhile, Dr Farjo is kneading my head, moving my scalp around with his fingers, like he were making bread.

"Yes, there's good movement here," he says. "You have good scalp laxity."

"Great!" I say, enthusiastically, without really knowingwhy. I suppose if he's happy . . . Later however the significance of having an elastic scalp will become very obvious to me.

Then Dr Farjo puts a band around my head. I imagine it's something to do with restricting blood supply during the procedure but I don't ask, probably because of the Valium. And he announces he's about to shave off what's left of the hair on top of my head, the 20 or 30 remaining hairs that have been carefully re-arranged so's to look like 35 or 40. Panic time.

"Eh? Shave my head? Not in a million years! Turn me into Kojak? You can't. In fact, I'll look worse than Kojak because I'll have hair at the sides. I'll look like Max Wall's younger brother or that odd-ball Keith Flint from the Prodigy.

"I didn't know about having my head shaved. I thought the transplanted hair would be happily introduced to the existing filaments and they'd get on famously and live happily ever after. Or at least until the old hair fell out in it's own good time.

"I'm out of here!"

• The writer didn't leave the clinic however. He went on to have a successful transplant. Contact www.farjo.com

How to get a head start on hair loss

MEN have suffered from baldness from the beginning of time.

These days some choose to shave their heads and make a statement of their baldness, such as actors Jason Statham, Bruce Willis and Patrick Stewart.

Some, like Elton John, cover their heads with weaves or wigs. But most men would be happier with more hair. That's Frank Sinatra, Status Quo's Francis Rossi and, if the rumours are true, Irish actor James Nesbitt, have had hair transplants.

Sean Connery of course rarely appears on screen without a hairpiece. And Charlton Heston never, ever took his off.

For too long baldness has been the subject of derision; it's no surprise that the cartoon characters with a negative persona, such as Elmer Fudd and Homer Simpson, are bald.