One of my producers referred to the picture lurking below of a piratically-bearded me as “frightening”. However, that’s not the reason I shaved it off this morning. Nor was I intent on making myself look younger. I don’t. My daughter claims beardlessness makes me look “more serious”, or possibly just less ridiculous.

No, it was done because of the intolerable itchiness and the fact that we had a carry-out curry the other night from the UK’s Most Northerly Indian Takeaway (just next door to The UK’s Most Northerly Chip Shop). That chicken channa stuck around, literally, far too long.

Of course, having reduced my hirsuteness quotient, I discovered that the beard – or at least, facial hair – is apparently going to be the male fashion accessory of 2009. Sting has a beard (I think that stems for a period moonlighting as a Tantric Santa Claus in the Chippenham Woolworths). Brad Pitt has a dodgy moustache. Prince William is sporting what they call in the Royal Navy a ‘full set’.

This matters to me not a jot, a whit or a follicle. Beards and curries do not go together, and that’s good enough for me.