Pimp My Beard: The Pandemic Years

I see patio furniture, everywhere.

Yes, that's right beardophiles, there's a nu kidd on the blok (note: I'm not a fan of such phonetic spelling alternatives but our lawyer, Ken Undercleft - actually a pretty good guy, alerted me to the fact that former new kid on the block™, Gavin Humongous Finney, has in fact bought the rights to the phrase when applied in a beardery context). Without, therefore, further ado, PMB© brings you:

Soft Rock

First, a confession. I know this guy. I first met Avishek Banerjee, in the hot, hot summer of 2003. A rare reprieve of rain had just passed and a fetid perfume of dogs' piss, vegans' fart and bins' juice hovered above the sun baked pavements of Bristol's latin quarter. It's a little known fact about this Editor, but my hair will not tolerate anything between mid to aggressive humidity - so I had to get in somewhere pronto. Then, just as panic began its demented fumblings at the letter box to my brain: faint sonic tinklings reaching out to me. From afar? From where? I knew I had to follow: I had sub 60 seconds before the rising vapors would overwhelm the L'Oréal Tight Hold, generously moussed into my locks mere hours earlier, and my coiffure would go full Swayze. I closed my eyes and sunk to my knees to bring all my focus to bear on pinpointing the source of the gently calling sounds (I had recently watched a Kevin Costner film, I think Waterworld, in which he had great success with this technique). Someone told me to get out of the fucking way but I didn't hear because I was so focused and sensual. Suddenly, as if it were not me that were doing it, I got to my feet and sprinted to the end of the street. Vegans were looking at me, but I didn't care. I rounded the corner and plunged down a flight of steps that carried me to the subterranean fountain of sound: a low ceiling-ed blues bar with white-washed walls and a thick fug of cigar smoke. And there was Avishek, on stage with his band, The Psychedelic Omnivore Caravan, stroking notes from his guitar like whimpers of pleasure from an over-aroused cat.

After the gig, I invited Avi for a drink (stout) and explained how his artful guitar plucking had guided me away from a clear and precipitant danger to my thatchy barnet. He listened attentively with a far away look in his eye and I knew he was composing a song about my travails using his mind. We then struck up an easy going exchange around cloud formations and our shared dislike for the musical note, B. Cutting edge beardery was just a twinkle in my eye back then, but ever since the birth of PMB©; its burgeoning growth; the time I let myself down and was exposed by vigilante facial defence hackers: then my triumphant leap back into the scene like Free Willy smashing through the surface of the water (representing self doubt) and up into the Atlantic air (the internet), but then remaining there at the apex of his jump (top of the beardery charts) forever, I have been making encouraging noises to Avi about making a submission.

In our last edition, I took the liberty of springing a cameo on the man. He sent me a text of a monocled face emoji followed by prosthetic leg and turbaned man. I guessed he'd enjoyed the cameo appearance, but nagging doubts nagged me that I had not first sought his permission to use one of our privately shared images. You can imagine my sticky palmed anticipation therefore, when I received an email titled, "New Album and a picture you might like". Now going by the name of his solo outfit, The A.V.I. who Shegged me, his new album, 'Es P an âge?', certainly jostled my clogs. As for the picture attached to the email, well, not only did it blow my socks, but it flipped my lid, hit me for six and then tore me a new one. Gaping. That picture, as you have guessed, was of his cosmically toussled new look: Soft Rock.

PMB: VE Day Special

In this PMB© special, we commemorate the derring do of the sterling generation of geez who really put it up the sausage scoffers. And did they like it up em, the Nazi dem? On the 8th of May 1945, they were forced to concede that they did not. 

Three out of the standard four quarters of a century later, PMB© reads the wartime roles of the current generation writ large across their manicured chops.

Reconnaissance Corps

Wehrmacht? This guy'll find them and when he's found them he'll mark them. When's he marked them, he'll used the latrine. Then he'll be off again.

The Galley Boy

All aboard the HMS Bryan Adams -best grub on the seven seas, served up by the slopping ladle load. Give him a wink and you might just get seconds. 

The Conscientious Objector

Does this man not like war?

You be the judge.

Blackmarketeer

Two pounds of puff for a punnet of prunes?

Two punnets of prunes.

Cantankerous Munitions Factory Foreman

Get to fuck, the lot of yis.



The Blighty Wound

Took one to the fleshy part of the thigh and evacked home. Healing slowly chaps, but doing my bit going town to town servicing the local totty. Doc says I should be fighting fit by June 45.

Air Raid Warden

He fackin loves air raids! Wind up the siren - Stuff em down the underground - Blow the whistle - Fackin love it!!

The Double Agent

"où sont les papiers secrets?"

MIA

Last seen drifting westward, contentedly whittling a rudder and a port-side gunwale from a matchstick.

Shell Shock

He saw too much, much too young

The Mother Fucker

THIS MAN WILL NOT RESPECT RATIONING. Do not keep comestibles near this man - sandwiches, onions, a ramekin of sultanas, a tube of Jacob's water biscuits, even the stubbornest of pistachios that you're saving for another crack at later - all will be snouted the moment you turn your back.


Lord of the Admiralty

This jolly sailor is choreographing British navel operations worldwide. And don't the bell bottomed boys just love it! Forget anarchy in the UK, this is Gallipoli, avec plié

Dam Buster

Wrong dam.

Merchant Seaman

Nah, we couldn't get blackcurrants this time. Sorry lads.

From the shadows, cometh the light.

My throat gulps and my fingers fidget or tremble. I am breathing both rapidly and erratically. I am nervous. I know what I am about to do. I’ve been tossing it around figuratively in my mind for days -  back and forth like a piece of crustless white bread that you’ve balled up and squished all the air from:

I can't go back, that chapter is over.

                                                            If there was ever a time to come back, it's now.

They were right though, I became what I most hate.

                                                            But what is hate?

My feeling towards what I had become.

                                                            I see... But you’ve to forget that all now.

I just… I don’t know if I can do it anymore.

                                                            But what if you can?

Then maybe I can be force for good in these times?

                                                            Don’t get ahead of yourself.

But I thought you were saying...

                                                            Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t.

That’s horrible! To build me up like that…

                                                            I’m just yanking your chain! You can do it.

Finally, I take a long, poignant (the stakes are high) look at myself in the bathroom mirror. Are you still in there? Are you there, Editor? “Yes” comes back the cry, as if coming from inside an old oak cupboard at the end of a long ornate hallway, such as you might find in the Versailles Palace. “Yes”, comes the cry again, sounding the same as in the previous description, “I want to help. The people need insightful beardery, now more than ever before. Plus, nobody has been able to bring leadership and direction to the field since PMB© collapsed after the hacking scandal of December, 2017.”

Until recently, I hadn't noticed what had become of the nation's chin, tache and chops. My shame drove me underground after the hacking. What it exposed - a man driven to harrowing extremes in search of beardly perfection - is too painful to recapitulate here. The hacking held up, not a mirror to my face but, a ladder to my attic. And, up that ladder and, in that attic there was a portrait. It was me, with a grotesque moustache and palsied scrotum (I was wearing a toga in the portrait but sitting on a crouching servant boy, legs akimbo). I had to walk away, because the portrait wasn't nice to look at. Remington pulled their sponsorship soon afterwards and you know the rest.

The spiraling events of the outbreak however, gripped me by the lapels and thrust me back out into the community to hunt for vital supplies. The extent of the degradation I encountered there shook me so violently, that I could no longer insulate myself from the current plight. Pudding-bowl beards are everywhere, the Sellack moustache has returned to prominence and those trying to inject some creativity to proceedings are trying much too hard. Just days ago, I purchased a jumbo-box of sage and onion Paxo from a tradesman who had shaved the poems of Mao Zedong, 1972 through 76, into his beard. The only thing I could even read in there was "Nixon". In these darkest of days the current state of beardery is intolerable. PMB© has heard the siren's call and PMB© must answer.

People of Britain and elsewhere. You may be frightened. You may be alone. You may be bickersome with those you are not alone with, if you are not alone. You may be without household essentials and a viable pet to walk. But pioneering men’s grooming guidance you must not, you shall not lack.


PIMP MY BEARD: APOCALYPSE SOLD SEPARATELY

Loverman

Once, in conversation with tache sensation, Andrew "The Commuter" Bell, we got onto the topic of iconic Dutch centre-forwards. It wasn’t long until one particular marksman came up. “Oh, Bergkamp – he was a stone cold lover.”

This Editor is reminded of Bell’s remark whilst gazing at the mousy down of this archival Nissan beard. We've not spoken for sometime but I saw in the dailies that he's recently impregnated his glamorous wife, Alexandra, to the point of childbirth. Hat's off to them both.

Fitting then, to begin our renaissance with a naissance. And there's nuance in this naissance. Note the equal thickness of beard, brows and top. Note the buccaneering swagger. Will you be my Rear Admiral? That's right, don't be fooled by his coy, yet come-hither glance. This man's cruising for a schmoozing. And when he schmoozes you, you'll know you've been schmoozen to.



Pimp My Beard is open for business. Editor, out.