Iain Maciver writes …

DO I LOOK dodgy? From my photo, have I the aura of a war criminal about me, or perhaps an insurance fraudster? I ask because the unearthing of Radovan Karadzic, the alleged Butcher of Bosnia, has put the focus on beards and prompted questions about the fine and distinguished gentlefolk who sport them.

First Saddam fled and got exceedingly whiskery in his hole in the ground. Then there was the canoe man, John Darwin, who also found he had the time for manly cultivation to alter his phizog. With Karadzic, Fleet Street’s finest have decided that all beardies are a bit bonkers and running away from something.

Never trust a beardie, they warn. They are all shifty types. Except Rolf Harris. Because he is lovely, apparently. He is the only beardie apart from Santa Claus that you should ever trust. Everyone else uses their bristles to consciously or otherwise conceal something dark about themselves, they claim.

Mine, of course, is only a wee one. Ask my wife. She dubbed it her little tickler. She used to call something else her little tickler, but now it is just my little hairy promontory. Problem is that it is going a bit grey.

Beards, grey or otherwise, have had appalling PR. Long ago, a full dark set was a sure sign the wearer was a psychopath or murderer. Ask them to draw a baddie and nine out of 10 kiddies who do not themselves have a parent with facial fungus will create a fearful depiction of a large, ugly man with a black beard.

Mad, staring eyes. That crazed smile. Like Councillor Angus McCormack when he was teaching me maths.

And if fuzzies are not bad, they are made out to be just boring. Think bewhiskered archaeologists, librarians, professors – and councillors. Of course, I am thinking not just of my former maths teacher, but also that well-grizzly Barra member, Donald Manford.

Not that this pair of hairies are boring. Quite the opposite. How could a teacher of algebra and geometry who was the spitting image of Grigori Rasputin and a committee chairman who has devoted his life to slagging off Caledonian MacBrayne be anything less than exciting?

Yet grey beards are not favoured in politics. When Frank Dobson was standing against Red Ken for London mayor, the Labour spinmeisters suggested he should have it off. Grey whiskers are not a good look, they reckoned. Dobbo’s rapid reply included the words get and stuffed.

Real Christians, as opposed to those others who go to church just because they hope to one day stand for council, should never take a blade to their stubble. The Bible is clear on the matter in Leviticus 19:27: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” I don’t know about keeping my head corners sharp, but I do get the message about not trimming the straggly edges.

And we are blessed to have a splendidly hairy-faced Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams is the first symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican communion to resist the cheek-slapping TV commercials for razors and foam since 1677.

Other faiths set such fine examples compared to our wishy-washy, allegedly Bible-based Churches. Soon after arriving in London, I was sent to Stamford Hill. Go get some clients there. You’ll see why, they said. Off the bus and I was thunderstruck. Almost every guy on the street had on a black suit, a black hat and boasted a very long beard.

Far from looking in any way shifty, these Hasidic Jews had about them, with their absolute conformity and calm air of obedience, a deep-seated serenity and a mystical purpose that I had never come across. For all their fundamentalism, maybe Free Presbyterians have a long way to go. Bin the razors for a start, I say.

The most hardline, small and clever denominations in America realise that some girls like their lads smooth. In Amish and Hutterite settlements, for example, men shave when they are young, free and single. Then they marry and it all changes. They must never go near a razor again. Ever.

Bet the women thought of that one, keeping their men by making them grizzly.

While my beloved insists she adores it, her sisters have now taken to saying they are fed up seeing my little greying tickling thing every day. They think I should cut it off.

Having taken to stroking it fondly each day, such as when I am deep in thought, I am loath to give it the snip.

Billy Connolly tackled the problem by turning his purple. Like him and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and, methinks, Osama bin Laden, I must consider defying the march of time and having myself a tickler to dye for.

Published in the Press and Journal on August 6, 2008