This week bald men everywhere will have been walking around with smiles of eager anticipation on their faces.

What will have cheered them up is news that a new anti-balding pill is coming on to the market. At least, that's what we're supposed to believe.

Never mind that it plays havoc with the libido at the same time. If you have a fine head of hair, who needs sex! You can spend hours instead admiring yourself in the mirror and combing your newly-replenished locks!

There is, in fact, a lot of mythology surrounding baldness, and some of it has been used to try to have this new treatment made available on the NHS.

Here's what the charity (yes, charity!) Hairline International has to say: "Baldness can destroy marriages, wreck careers and ruin lives."

Oh no it can't. A lack of any sense of proportion about baldness can do all that. Obsessive worrying about baldness verging on paranoia can. But baldness itself is no bar to happy marriage, a successful career and a fulfilled life.

Back to Hairline International: "We did a survey of our members recently in which 75 per cent said they had lost out on life because of the condition."

What does that prove, for heaven's sake? It wasn't a survey of all bald people, only those whose sense of insecurity about their shortage of hair drew them to an organisation like Hairline International. You would expect at least 70 per cent of those to think it had caused them to miss out.

The same report which informed me about all this also added that "Some 7.5 million men suffer from baldness in the UK".

Suffer? What a terrible devaluation of that word! People suffer from diseases or starvation. They don't suffer because they haven't much in the way of hair. (I must make it clear here, before pens are put to paper - as happened last time I wrote about this subject - that I am talking about men who go bald naturally, not people whose baldness is caused by illness or by medical treatments.)

As someone whose wedding photographs show a 19-year-old with a hairline clearly receding at the temples and who was decidedly thin on top by the age of 25, I feel well qualified to have my say on this subject.

Being bald has never bothered me. Indeed, as founder of Bald Pride, I have done my best to boost the self-image of bald people (we refuse to acknowledge the PC term "follicly challenged").

In fact, here's a brief insight into the counselling methods Bald Pride uses...

STEP 1: Point out to the client the advantages of baldness, particularly if you have a William Hague haircut - eg, you can walk out in a gale without looking in the least windswept; you need never buy a comb; you can save a fortune on shampoos and conditioners (although you will probably have to spend some of the money saved on a cap for the winter).

STEP 2: Emphasise that baldness goes with a high level of the male sex hormone testosterone, and consequently is a small price to pay for being a sex machine.

STEP 3: Stress how a bald head lets the character on your face shine through unhindered.

STEP 4: List a few bald role models who have made it to the top, such as Patrick Stewart, Sean Connery, Ross Kemp and Andre Agassi.

STEP 5: If all that fails, pat the client affectionately on the top of his head two or three times and say "Pull yourself together, Baldy." As you are a Baldy too, he will not be able to take offence and might even laugh, showing that he is on the way to being cured.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.