Herbal Essences: fucking awful advertising since 2004.

I had lunch with OIR, the most prolific blogger In The World, in a pub that beerintheevening.com rates 4.2/10 because we’re dead classy. An incredibly compassionate, funny person, OIR has a persona extension when writing. She becomes a really hardcore, take no prisoners force of nature, which, while fundamentally her and something that is clear whenever you chat, is bizarrely at odds with her enormous laugh and propensity for gin. It’s always good reading and makes me eternally shamed at not writing about things that matter.

In the absence of any gigs and being contractually obliged to not entirely SLAG OFF the Miami Vice premiere (US PRs should be dipped in bleach and fed to skunks) I was thinking about writing something meaningful, something that had really got me thinking over the last few days, but other than AA Gill’s jaw-droppingly awful report from Albania in the Sunday Times magazine this weekend (What were you thinking? Seriously?), nothing’s managed to penetrate the heat-fuddled mess slopping around inside my head.

So, naturally, we’re going to talk about hair. Our crowning glory, our glorious locks. There was a really sad piece about Gail Porter in one of the fluorescent women’s mags lying around reception that has pictures which look like she’s cutting herself. No “gardening accident” does such harsh, neat marks and nobody should have to feel like that. I don’t know anything about alopecia (other than my mother driving me to the doctor’s once and telling me, somewhat bizarrely, that I’d never get a husband if I went bald. What is this, 1952?) but I saw her at a screening a few months ago and she really is gorgeous. She has one of those faces that is so alive it lights up everyone around it. Don’t be sad Gail Porter, you’re a stunner.

Back to non-serious silly season land. Everyone’s had bad hair, but I experienced Bad Hair a couple of months ago when I made the classic mistake of a) going to a Soho hairdressers b) not being a boy c) having a lovely natter with the hairdresser d) failing entirely to watch what the hell she was doing to my head. I came out with a dyke mohawk. She used clippers for Christ’s sake. What was worse, I then went to a Kula Shaker concert and as, understandably enough, none of my friends are stuck in 1997, I proceeded to spend the evening tra-ling along to ‘303’ as the token weirdo with Bad Hair sitting in the corner spilling wine on her feet. Emo so isn’t me.

Haircuts make a huge difference to people. It can affect how attractive you find someone (oh come on, you so are that shallow), it can transform a face, hell – a romantic angst haircut can temporarily stop you snivelling after a break up and do the “I’m AWESOME” thing that those horrible soul songs with Aretha/Diana/Banana so entirely fail to do.

I lopped off six inches of hair after a particularly nasty break up two years ago and felt transformed. I stepped through the door of “Idiot! Never go out with your best friend!” into “Hello! You are already at least seven times more interesting than two hours ago.” I still felt like shit, but at least I looked the shit.

As with nearly everything that you can throw money at, it becomes addictive. Some people get tattoos, other people get piercings and having run out of places I wanted pierced after, ooh, seven fairly anodyne ones, hair became my new plaything, especially when I accidentally went too short last summer and realised “Hey! With the magic of hair straighteners and industrial quantities of mousse, I too can pull off spikes and Audrey Hepburn.”

The boyfriend at the time was less than thrilled. “I liked it long,” he said, unhelpfully. I ignored him and went on gazing at my pixie-like reflection in the mirror. Elfin. Pixie. These are words you don’t hear often when Angela Carter books classify you as a giant. They’re alluring and dangerous.

I spoke to him on MSN again today, as he’s off being musically important in India.

“How is your hair?” he asked, after the obligatory chat about food poisoning, drivers, arses and curry.

”Gettting cut on Monday. It’s getting a bit long and drifty around the shoulders.” (Mullet, rather than Julia Roberts.

“I like you long and drifty,” he said, again unhelpfully.

“Tough,” I replied.

At the moment, I like my hair short. I’ve had it long, mid, curly, straight, wavy, up, down, dyed since I can remember, and seeing as I have no real plans of modifying my body in any other way other than be getting enormously fat or getting Gym, I really enjoy the control I have over it. If other people don’t like it, then they’re very kind and keep their mouths shut. I really don’t mind. I like what I’ve done to it and for the first time in years, I don’t need anyone else to validate it for me.

Still. I thank God I didn’t have a camera during the mohawk stage.