When I was 20 I must have settled on what I thought I looked like, and now every day I'm surprised that I don't still look like that 30 years later. There must have been a reasonable-looking phase, between the spots clearing up and the hair falling out. I think it was a Thursday.
I am quite conservative about my appearance. At college, when all my friends were getting piercings or daft haircuts, I lacked the required self-confidence, so decided such vanities were a distraction from the main business of opposing Thatcher. It was the same when there was a fashion for goatee beards. My fringe noted my disdain for hair anywhere near the face and promptly went into rapid retreat. My contemporaries have taken to wearing tweed caps to cover their baldness, but there is no hat on the market that does not make John O'Farrell look like an old git. The hair that has clung on is turning grey and I have laughter lines from watching other people's comedy and worry lines from rereading my own.
People who haven't seen me for a couple of decades are astonished at just how much I look like my dad. He had bushy Irish eyebrows and a nose that alcohol had turned red. Every now and then the barber trims my eyebrows and I cut back the drink. My plan is to ignore this ageing business and hope it goes away. But if these bags under my eyes get any bigger, Ryanair will make me pay extra for them.