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Warnie's Hair Commercials Are Just Not Cricket

There IS life after hair. It doesn’t involve shampoo, but that doesn’t make it unconditional.
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Warnie is an ambassador for the hair replacement specialists, because if there’s anything a company needs it’s a top spinner.
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Warnie is an ambassador for the hair replacement specialists, because if there’s anything a company needs it’s a top spinner.

Shane Warne was one of the best cricketers of all time. Love him or loathe him, when he was at the wicket the game was never dull. I miss him playing the game and much preferred the ball in his hand to a microphone.

But this isn't about what's in his hand. It's about what's on his head. And thanks to Advanced Hair Studios, there's much to discuss.

Ever since Liz Hurley bowled him over, there has been speculation about whether Warnie's had plastic surgery. No one knows for sure, although it does appear that since leaving the wicket he doesn't want a single crease.

Whether actually balding or not, Warnie is an ambassador for the hair replacement specialists, because if there's anything a company needs it's a top spinner.

Warne is appearing in a new Advanced Hair commercial announcing a breakthrough in stem cell hair regrowth, although the star of the ad is a man of science who needs a personality transplant rather than a hair transplant.

Warne had more lines to learn for the official press release, where he's quoted as saying:

"I've seen AHS produce amazing advancements in helping people with hair loss over the years. From the strand-by-strand process to laser therapy and now with the help of this breakthrough technology through stem cell research."

That's a far more scientific and sensitive call to action for baldies than the one back in 2014, when Warnie wore a t-shirt saying: NO HAIR, NO LIFE.

As a bald man with a head so shiny I can get pay TV for free, I objected to Warne's less than subtle suggestion that NO HAIR = NO LIFE. Subliminal advertising it wasn't. More like sledgehammer advertising.

Yes, despite being the former king of subtle variation, be it his arm ball, flipper or googly, away from the wicket Warne is never one to mince his words. But to bully people into signing up for hair replacement therapy, now that was a wrong'un.

I might be splitting hairs but, as a bald man with a life, I found the NO HAIR, NO LIFE campaign to be false advertising and wish to beg every baldy out there not to fret or be fooled: There ­IS life after hair. It doesn't involve shampoo, but that doesn't make it unconditional.

I'm the proudest baldy you could find, and thanks to my disco ball head I'm extremely easy to find.

But it wasn't always thus.

Going bald was worse than being bald. When I realised I was losing my hair (I can't remember the precise date off the top of my head) I must confess I did keep a casual eye on my options. This was around the time another former Australian spinner Greg Matthews was spruiking fake hair. (What is it with Advanced Hair Studios and spin bowlers? Is it because spinners hate shine?)

Not that I was truly considering an implant, or transplant, or any kind of plant, but I ruled out surgical intervention for good when I heard – rightly or wrongly -- that Matthews had to go back to the factory every so often to have the mould cleaned out from under the carpet.

Alternative remedies were less enticing.

My former music teacher had a comb-over which used to flap about when he conducted the school orchestra. I was the pimply percussionist. Hardly a sex-cymbal.

A former colleague used black boot polish to fill in the blanks. His Hush Puppies were scuffed and dying of thirst but his head was as black as the bottom of a saucepan when it's my turn to cook.

Another follicularly challenged friend discovered a freak cow in Venezuela which, for $10 a time, licked the afflicted scalp. Apparently its bovine saliva contained some baldness-curing enzyme. It sounded like hogwash to me but the owner of the cow was milking it for all it was worth.

Animals invariably feature in bizarre cures for baldness. Chinese herbalists suggest a snake ground into a paste and mixed with fo-tiroot should do the trick, but my personal favourite is the ancient elixir of honey, beer and goat dung. Apparently they believed baldness was heaven-sent and that if the gods mistook you for a goat they would choose another 'victim'.

If none of the above remedies appeal, you could do what a British friend of mine suggested and tattoo rabbits on your scalp so that from a distance they may look like hares.

Or you could do what I eventually did: embrace your baldness, purchase a set of clippers and lop off what's left of your locks.

Don't care. Yeah yeah.

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