Why Movember has got Ben Machell bristling with self-doubt

I am not a very hairy man. Never have been. If I don’t shave for a month I end up looking like… well… I end up looking exactly the same. Perhaps if you peered very closely at my chin you might notice a few fine, rogue hairs, like you sometimes get on a pork scratching. But beyond that? I’m just naturally smooth.

I watch bombastic commercials for seven-bladed razors with the same sense of polite curiosity I normally reserve for tampon adverts. Wow! Looks good! But what’s that? Do I actually need one? Um, no. No I do not.

For the most part, I am relaxed about this. I am rational. Having virtually no facial hair at 36 does not make me any less of a man. This isn’t ninth-century Norway. This is London, 2018, and there’s room for everyone, even men like me who essentially look like a very weary Gareth Gates. Still, for the past few years I’ve had to quietly swallow my pride as thousands of men take part in ‘Movember’, which involves growing a moustache over the course of November in order to raise awareness of men’s health issues. Now, I physically can’t do that. And while I know it’s unlikely that anyone is going to die as a direct result of me not looking like Tom Selleck, deep down, I don’t like the fact that this is out of my hands.

But even worse? Even worse is a new study, published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, which suggests that women find men with facial hair more attractive than those without. That stings, like I can only imagine aftershave does. Although actually, reading the fine print, it says that women most prefer men who haven’t shaved for 10 days. I go 10 days without shaving all the time! Perhaps I’m sexier than I thought.

I’ve never taken psychedelic drugs, but I’ve spent a lot of time in paediatric A&E with my children very late at night, and I’m sure it’s just as surreal. Last week, at the crack of dawn, my (incredibly constipated, turns out) two-year-old daughter and I were sitting, bleary-eyed, watching reruns of The Avengers on the waiting room TV, and it was beyond trippy. The time before that I saw a kid sat opposite us practising calligraphy at 2am. It was like something from a David Lynch film. Seriously. If you want to expand your mind, have kids.