I could see there was something significant going on with this lad’s hair. Max, 13, had plainly gone to some trouble with it. His mum and dad, old friends of mine, clocked my quizzical look. “He wants a mullet and this is the closest we’ve let him get to it,” his mum said. Max explained that even getting this far on the road to full mullet had demanded some subterfuge on his part – a conspiracy, in fact, between him and the barber.
What happened was this: knowing his mum was watching him like a hawk, he asked the barber for a “low taper”. I don’t know what that is, but the barber did. This was a wink to the wise. “I know what you really want is a mullet,” she whispered to him. And minutes later, to his mother’s dismay, this new semi-mullet was getting its first outing on the streets of Chislehurst. Nice work, son.
But why a mullet? Max had no answer for me, other than to claim that everybody wants one. The last time everybody wanted one was 40 years ago when his dad and I were at school together. But I was in a bar on Saturday watching rugby with a bunch of youths, many of them mulleted up to the gills. Great masses of curly hair at the front, on top and down the back, but nothing on the sides. All very mysterious. Everything must change so everything can stay the same.
The last time I sported a mullet, not long ago, it was a wig I bought from a joke shop. The occasion was a friend’s 40th birthday, which we were asked to attend in hairpieces of our choosing. Norman Lamont happened to be there, sporting a big, curly, 18th-century dandy-style number. There the two of us stood, like Beau Nash and Chris Waddle, bickering about Brexit. He looked very fine indeed. Never mind the mullet; it’s about time the Beau Nash barnet made a comeback. I’ll have a word with Max about it and see if I can get him to change tack.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
