The Beard Blog

A Collection Of Beardies

2007-12-18T09:09:00.000Z

Here, on the most desperately cold miserable drizzly (I think the Scots call it "driech") day, here are three beardies taking shelter in the Maltings in Wells-next-the-sea during the Christmas Tide festivities. Cy (on the left) had the unenviable job of photographing the whole event - and just before he headed out to point his camera at the soggy lantern parade, he handed control over to his wife Cathy for this shot. On the right, with a sharp blade too near my whiskers for comfort, is Steve Parish of Past Alive (he and his wife Jo take Living History into Schools - tel: 01604 584307 for details). Having had the top of my head chopped, I have the least total hair - but was surprised when seeing this picture that my beard is the longest. You can see a bunch of Cy's other photos of the day here.

I met Cy earlier in the summer when he was photographing Allyfest - and for some reason he thought to take a picture of me:

If you want to see any more of Cy's work (and I tell you, he really knows what he is doing with a camera), have a look at http://www.cycoze.deviantart.com/

And finally, Merry Christmas all, bearded or not!

Another Photo Gallery

2007-09-24T22:29:00.000+01:00

I've just had an email from Michael Elsden, who was one of the official photographers at Brighton - he's just put up galleries of his photos at http://www.elsdenimages.com/WBMC.html

Videos are up on YouTube

2007-09-17T22:11:00.000+01:00

All technical and geographical difficulties have been surmounted, and I have now put the footage my Sis shot at the World Beard & Moustache Championships up on YouTube. There are two videos - the first one shows the morris dancing and general milling around outside the Town Hall (highlights being a first sight of Jürg Biland's amazingly hugely wide beard - so big he has to walk through doors sideways - plus a nice view of my spats, and a very detailed all round view of Colin Bell, the nearly naked silver alien) - and then you get to see pretty well every competitor in the Championships as the whole parade walks by.

The second video shows the judging of the Partial Beard Freestyle Competition, in which yours truly took part - look out for Andrew Sheader's astonishing one-handed handspring which Sis did well to get centre-frame - in fact, given that she is only five foot nothing and was surrounded by big hairy guys in outlandish costumes, she did a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of the event.

Since I last wrote, there has been a huge swell of photos appearing on the web - firstly you can look at the top three in each category on the Handlebar Club website, and they have also got a selection of other photos as well as links to a number of other galleries.

ITV Local News segment now up

2007-09-03T19:01:00.000+01:00

There's a good overview of the whole World Beard & Moustache Championship up on ITV Local - starts with a couple of minutes of silliness that went out live on the Friday evening local news, and then 10 minutes of footage and interviews spliced together from throughout the events of Saturday. I make a couple of appearances - once with beard clean and free, and the other fully waxed up.

It's all over for 2007

2007-09-02T21:55:00.000+01:00

Well, where shall I start? So much has happened over the last couple of days. I drove down from Norfolk on Friday - got down to the Brighton centre in mufti and with beard undressed to get myself registered and meet some of my fellow contestants - plus take part in a live local news segment for ITV Meridian (we were told it would be available for viewing at www.itv.com/local/meridian from Monday 3rd September) - I was standing next to the couple of guys they interviewed so may have got my mug on the box.

Then on Saturday, I was up early to give myself plenty of time to get my styling right. From my practice runs I'd realised that my upper cheek growth needed to go - it was rather wispy and just distracted from my design - but the thing was, this then involved a bit of shaving for the first time in a year - not something I approached without nervousness. I managed to avoid any major disasters and this is what I ended up with:

This is not at all what I thought I was going to turn out like a couple of weeks ago - a mix of running out of time and having to work with what I'd got rather than what I'd like. I was very fortunate to be able to talk firm-hold hair-styling with Johnny, one of the regulars at the library, who used to sport a triumphant mohecan - his product of choice was gelatine but I wasn't sure that was within the rules and so he pointed me towards Dax Wax and Silvikrin extra firm hold hairspray - and a bloody sticky concoction ensued which pretty well did the trick (though, because the span-to-weight ratio was not in my favour, I did have significant droop problems throughout the day - but enough of my personal problems...).

I arrived at the Brighton Centre at about half nine and went straight into the pre-judging - a process that is necessary to ensure competitors are entered in the correct category. Having shaved my upper cheeks, I knew I was no longer full beard, so I changed category to Partial Beard Freestyle - and then it was loads of milling around looking at all the fantastic facial appendages and an almost endless variety of costumes - with not many the same, which is quite something with 250 competitors. I didn't take a camera with me - but you don't need me to show you what everyone looked like - there was an incredible concentration of photographic equipment and already a load of pictures are up at http://www.flickr.com/ (search for "world beard" and choose to view with the most recent first).

After a call to muster from the town crier, we all headed off to the Town Hall to see the morris dancers and then to start the parade through the lanes back to the Brighton Centre. It was brilliant to see the smiles and laughter all along the route - in fact, anywhere you went during the day, people looked happy and full of life. I had some lovely chats with many friendly people, including a lovely interviewer from a local internet TV station.

And then the real action began as the judging for the first moustache category got underway. Unfortunately for a lot of the spectators it was difficult to see the detail of the follicular constructions (maybe next time they'll consider having a video camera at the front of the stage and a projector showing things on a big screen) and there were some inevitable delays whilst scores for each category were collated, but overall things went pretty smoothly and as the afternoon went on and the beer flowed and the hall filled (it was a complete sell-out of 2300 tickets), the audience got more and more involved - shouting out the ID numbers of their favourites in each category, and bantering with the comperes. The atmosphere when my category came on stage was brilliant - people love the freestyle sections and there really were some class acts on view (not only in terms of some of the most extraordinary beards in the whole event, but also the nearly-nude silver glitter space alien - maybe not the premier beard on display but an absolutely tremendous sight - a more outrageous piece of rampant exhibitionism I do not think I have ever seen and my God that guy's laughter muscles are going to be killing him today). My Sis videoed us all parading around (to go along with the footage of the parade of every competitor passing by in the street earlier in the day) - and when we've grappled with the technology (which may be a couple of weeks), I'll stick it up on YouTube for all to see. In the meantime, you can see the top three from the 23 in my category in Alison Millar's Flickr stream. I am proud of the fact that I had the only intentionally asymmetrical facial hair design at the championships (I think) but maybe the beard world is not ready for asymmetry (certainly a few fellow competitors pointed out with concern that my lefthand side was disconnected and dropping...). Whatever, there is no debate that the top two were in different class from the rest of us - professionals amid many amateurs.

After we came off stage, there were more photos - as a group and then upstairs for individual studio shots - some for individual photographers who wanted to expand their portfolios but a couple are going to be producing books and so there was a bit of interviewing to go with the photos - and then an "after" interview with the same TV girl I talked to earlier.

I managed to get back down to the hall for the start of the Full Beard Natural - in some ways this is the blue riband event, and you could see that in the large number of entries (there were something like 40 massive growths on show) and in the fact that the crowd was going absolutely bananas. Fantastic.

By the time the judging and prize-giving ended I was pretty shattered. As I was sitting up on one of the balconies mentally preparing myself to leave, a couple came up and asked to have their photo taken with me. They said they'd been rooting for me and I want to thank them for giving me a perfect ending to the day.

And now here I am on the day after. I haven't shaved the thing off - in times past my beards have come and gone in a fairly impulsive way, and I'm not sure I have the level of obsession necessary to grow for years and years and years (this one was 16 months for the longest bits) - but it would be good to have another go and with more material. I can't see myself going to the next World Championships in Alaska in 2009, but presuming the next one two years after that is in Europe somewhere, well, who knows?

2 Days To Go: And Now A Mascot

2007-08-30T13:00:00.000+01:00

The day is nearly upon us - and now I have a mascot - lovingly grown by Sarah and then wondrously sculpted by David. This brilliant carrotcature will be accompanying me to Brighton - though I still need to organise portable refrigeration to ensure his comfort.

As things get closer, I have been getting info through from the organisers including the following which arrived last week:

"We have 225 registrations to date and growing ( I seem to get 1 or 2 more a day at the moment) and we have sold well over 1000 tickets for spectators - fully expecting at least 1500. The Brighton Centre have opened up another section so plenty of room if your friends and supporters have yet to buy tickets - available at the Brighton Centre Box Office on the morning of 1st September.

Also loads of media interest - TV, Radio and documentary programme makers."

Details of the schedule are at: Event Schedule - including a parade through Brighton late on Saturday morning.

I'm really looking forward to it - hope to see you there.

73 Days To Go - £400,000 well spent

2007-06-20T13:51:00.000+01:00

Having observed just what a peppy animated thing has done for the London Olympics, I thought I would invest some of my petty cash in getting one of my own:

Yes, yet another reason why I have not had a chance to add any posts to this blog over the last four months. I think you will agree that I have spent my money well. What you may not realise at first glance is that it contains a subliminal message. It would help me greatly in future development of this technology if you could let me know what you think the subliminal message is. One lucky winner (selected from all entries received by 1st September 2007) will win a waxed moustache that I shaved off and put in a pot in 1998.

73 Days To Go - The Perils of Intensive Beard Farming

2007-06-20T12:30:00.000+01:00

Yes, yes, I know - what sort of blog is this that only gets updated every four months? Well, what you have got to realise is that growing a World Champion beard is not the pursuit of a part-time hobbyist. A barbathlete (from 'barba', the Latin for 'beard', and 'athlete', the English for 'someone who takes stuff too seriously') needs to follow a rigorous training program involving control of diet and sexual frustration. Given that the diet must be high protein (a heady mix of meat and lentils and fartiferous beans) and that, by definition, a barbathlete must have facial hair, you would have thought that sexual frustration was guaranteed. The key though is the control of sexual frustration - the barbathlete must have the continual belief that he is going to have sex in the very near future (thus stimulating the production of testosterone and hence beard growth) but never to have that belief fulfilled (once satisfied, testosterone production tails off). As luck would have it I exhibit the perfect combination of self-delusion and painful shyness to ensure optimum testosterone production. How fantastic is that?

Unfortunately, as with any thoroughbred, I have a sensitive constitution - a recent sighting of a razor led to my immune system being compromised. The consequent pneumonia and tonsillitis meant a spell in hospital, but every cloud has a silver lining - what could be better for my beard growth than to be surrounded by nurses whilst being a drooling spitting mess? I thank God every day.

(For further details of the science behind this post, please have a look at a Time Magazine article about sex and beard growth)

193 Days To Go - Get Your Tickets!

2007-02-20T15:01:00.000Z

I have just noticed that tickets have just gone on sale for supporters of contestants and general spectators - see Ticket Sales - and it looks likes numbers are limited so if you want to come, now is the time to order!