‘It looked stunning on Joanna Lumley!’: 10 writers on their biggest hair disaster

It’s the late 1990s. Big, round, feathered fringes are a huge deal at my primary school. Most of my friends have one, influenced by Britney Spears or Emma Bunton. I, too, have a fringe. Mine, as you can see, appears more inspired by Kevin Keegan circa 1993.

Of course, calling what I’m sporting here “a fringe” is an incredible understatement. If you squint it could be a trendy east London mullet. Otherwise, I look a bit like a Knight Templar. Or someone wearing a hat made out of their own hair, on top of their own hair.

It may surprise you to learn this cut was not the result of a sleepover prank gone wrong. It was done by a professional – a hairdresser who lived up the road from my parents and came round to our house to cut my brother’s, my mum’s and my hair.

When I first discovered these photos, I assumed the look must have been a one-off. Maybe I moved just as the hairdresser was trimming the top and the only way to salvage things was to evoke Pat Sharp. Or maybe it was the hair equivalent of that botched Jesus fresco restoration: every attempt to improve it only made it worse.

It turns out I actually wore this hairstyle for almost a year, according to my mum. I have a photo of me in a summer dress – with a forehead that resembles a city skyline – where I’m probably seven. And there’s another where I’m wearing a primary school jumper, aged eight.

My mum has no recollection of the hair being a problem. She was happy with the cut back then, she says. “You were a little girl!” is her defence now.

Thankfully, I have no memory of actually sporting it. I have, however, spent most of my adult life feeling disproportionately stressed about going to the hairdresser. As they say, the body keeps the score. Kate Lloyd

‘What has he done to his hair now?’

They say you don’t appreciate something until you lose it – and that is never more true than with hair. After decades of treating mine as a disposable fashion accessory, it appears to have disposed of itself. Perhaps that’s why I look back so fondly on all the terrible things I did to it while I still had the chance.

The first was a pudding-bowl haircut that my mum and I appeared to share in the early 80s. At school, I had shoulder-length curtains with a shaved undercut, held out of my face with an alice band – a look I imagined made me resemble a member of Radiohead, rather than a teenage girl waiting to wash her face. It required constant maintenance because the curtains had to fall at exactly the right angle: too far apart and you looked like a medieval monk, too close together and you couldn’t see where you were going.

At college, it was a number one all over with a line shaved through one eyebrow, like Robbie Williams in Take That – or so I believed. I thought it made me look dangerous. In reality, I resembled someone who had lost a brief but intense argument with an electric razor.

At university, I had dreadlocks that made me look like Sonic the Hedgehog. For my first proper job, I went bleached blond, which accidentally made me look like my mum again, so that had to go. Then came a spiky mohawk: less Mr T, more startled parrot.

The problem is that, for the people around me, the dramatic effect diminishes each time. When I brilliantly shaved the top half of my head to look like Keith Flint from the Prodigy for a 90s-themed fancy-dress party, nowhere near enough people said: “I can’t believe what you’ve done to your hair!” Or: “You’ve won first prize.” Instead, they presumably thought: “What has Rich done to his hair now? What a berk.”

That, out of all the haircuts, was probably my worst, although it faces extremely stiff competition. Unlike my other terrible hairstyles, this one had only ever been intended to last for one night. The next morning, my Keith Flint costume had gone back in the wardrobe, but unfortunately my hair remained the same, so I was forced into another brief but intense argument with an electric razor – and this time the razor won. I thought I looked like Jay-Z, but in reality I looked more like an escaped convict. Rich Pelley

‘The technical term is: a terrible mess’

Meet Jeff at age 15 in 2006. Yes, you can laugh. I’d honestly be insulted if you didn’t laugh. My hair looks like a cross between a bird’s nest and tumbleweed. I believe the technical term for it is a “terrible mess”.

For about three years as a young teenager, I outright refused to get a haircut and just let my hair run wild. I would roll out of bed and without even so much as looking at a comb or a brush, walk out the door with an unkempt, knotty mess on my head.

I wasn’t trying to be edgy or cool. Believe me, I was teased mercilessly for my bad hair. Kids would come up and ask if there was something living in there or complain to the teacher that my hair was a distraction in class. Or they would “joke” that my parents were so poor they couldn’t afford to get me a haircut. One day when I was walking home from school, a group of students tried to throw pieces of chewed gum into my hair.

Still, I stubbornly brushed off any suggestions I should go to the hairdressers. That hairstyle was a masterclass in deflection and adolescent survival.

The summer before I started secondary school, a small group of classmates had spread a rumour that I was gay. News to me at the time. I didn’t even know what “gay” meant except it was clearly something bad and shameful. Friends whom I would once play with in the streets shunned me. No one would return my calls to hang out.

It was then that I decided to grow my hair. I walked into that first day of secondary school with the beginnings of my unruly, curly mane. I was almost unrecognisable to those who’d known me for years with an outdated mushroom cut.

The classroom whispers about my sexuality were drowned out by incessant questions and commentary about my ever-growing untamed hair. I didn’t know much back then, but something told me it was better to be the kid with weird hair than it was to be the gay kid.