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.

Pump Mr Beard - ☠ HACKED ☠ FDL TAKEOVER!

Dart Antoine, The Shit Musketeer

Caught red handed! The Lesser Spotted Braaaaning is snapped emerging from a disreputable gent's toileting facility in Highgate. What was he doing there? Well, one cannot speculate as to the likely sordid and despicable nature of each of the 36mins, 28 secs he idled there. But this much we, the FACIAL DEFENCE LEAGUE, were able to establish about the duplicitous actions of the self-styled beardery vigilante. 1. On entering said facilities, full beard. 2. On leaving said facilities, Dart Antoine. Coincidence?                                         

Thanks to sources obtained on the beardery underground, the FDL has now been able to reconstruct this series of events, by the ultimate revelation of which, readers may find themselves too disgusted to read on (were the article to continue). 

Through its murky network of intelligence operatives, the infamous Browning's Beard Boys, PMB© had learnt of an illustrated abridged version of Alexandre Dumas' "The Three Musketeers" that was kept, for reasons unknown but scandalously imaginable, in the end cubicle of the aforementioned Highgate gents' lav. How long it remained there before its discovery by the beige-shirted BBB, it is not possible to know. However, once sniffed out by the tentacular proboscis of the ever-olfactory BBB, it was only a matter of time before Braaaning infiltrated the pine and piss scented conveniences to get his avaricious, condensation moistened fingers on the unfortunate volume. Using a compact men's grooming set hidden in a stuffed owl that he'd slipped past the absent lavatory attendant, the beard burglar went about his shameful business. Hastily forging the fourth Musketeer's suave stylings about his own chops, Dart Antoine was born. 

Dart Antoine plots his next expedition to Slovenia

The motive for such vain-glorious larceny? Mowvember. That's right, Your Editor, Mr Silk Chinned Integrity himself has finally SOLD OUT. He, who stood tallest against the tide of propaganda that taught society to ogle beards as novel curios worn by attention seeking eccentrics, now prowls public lavatories to participate in its ultimate pageant, Mowvember. While the FDL has nothing against charitable ventures, it cannot support any movement which seeks to reduce beardery to an empty symbol of inane frivolity. Groomliness is Greatliness. The FDL will not tire in its crusade to expose those who despoil the beard and prostitute the tache, no matter the height from which they have fallen (Braaaning). PMB©, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED  

Here's another one of Braaaning looking like a right tart

Pimp My Beard - Season 3: Round 3

Monkey Business

The brightest burn shortest, it is often said, and for all but a few of the most eminent in the field of men's grooming, time at the top is notoriously short. Even the great Quinn, co-author of the Progressive Men's Grooming Manifesto, has yet to register a top 50 trending facial since signing a lucrative contract with an exclusive Turkish Barber's back in 2012. In beardery terms, it's simply rare for a new kid on the block to have staying power. But Gavin "Humongous" Finney is out to do just that. And he's taking no prisoners!

Mere months ago Finney sent shockwaves through the beardery community with his facial assault on the Fat Cats of the business community. The offices of PMB© have since been inundated with currency themed submissions as countless doppleganging disciples attempt to replicate and pay homage to Finney's groundbreaking new look. It was with no little anticipation therefore that this Editor looked up from his desk, alerted to Finney's approach by the merengue of coins in his pockets, which his newly adopted swagger had induced to dance. "What's popping, cracker?" He said, using slang. Unaccustomed to this form of address, yet used to moving with the times (as one must in this line of business!), I fired back, "What up, bitch?" It seemed to be received well and we completed an elaborate handshake before Finney sat down.

Finney: Monkey Business 2016

Only then did I have time to contemplate what he'd brought with him on his face. He noticed my eyes doing loop-the-loop as they traced the spiral of his helter skelter beardery. "Calm, innit?" He said. This slang even sounded as if it came from the current decade; I was going to struggle: "Yes... bruv". Finney continued, "Something switched after Common Cents.  Before, I was just like any other of the Guildford man dem, but now  I got bare youths coming up to me saying I'm a boss and wanting to tickle my chin." I replied hesitantly, unwittingly giving the words an interrogative inflection, "Right on." Finney was unphased, he went on, "Got all dem skets trying to get with me but man can't think bout nuffin but beardery. You get me?" I wasn't entirely sure that I did, but I said I did anyway, "Right on." I made mental note not to over do it with the right ons as Finney came to the point. "All my squad tried to do Euro signs in their beards for Brexit. I told them they were aiight, but  really I was like, those are some moist beards! An I ain't in the biz to get associated with no moist beards." - "Word." I chipped in, feeling like I was starting to get the hand of this. "Is that why you decided to sculpt a dope new beard?" Finney sat back in his chair and interlaced his fingers saying, "Gotta stay ahead of the game, fam."

A short silence was enjoyed as we both contemplated this simple beardery truth. My eyes started to spiral in toward the vortex on Finney's chin again before I snapped them away, chiding myself lest I lose my professional approach. "Why the monkey tail? Why Monkey Business?" I asked. Finney shrugged and smiled, "What can I say, I'm the king of the swingers, man." Although thinking to myself that this was a very cool thing to say, I didn't appreciate the full mischief of the remark until I read in the next day's papers that shortly after our interview, Finney had competed in a head to head mix-off with Goldie in a fashionable London nightclub (see pictures of the event below). There he was crowned the undisputed Jungle VIP.

Pimp My Beard - Season 3: Round 2

Catfish

Some things are just made to be: Rum and raisins; rhyme and reason; soldiers and syphilis; misuse of marsupials; Colgate and Val Kilmer; to be and or not to be: Sharky and George; raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, candle-lit dinners and reading from Dickens, slimy fat cabbages pickled in gin, these are a few inseparable things. And who could object to the insertion of Catfish and the murky depths into this most eminent list of binaries?

Here, never before photographed, Andrew, "Leather Chaps" Chapman, surfaces to offer a fleeting glance at the illusive Cat(fish)'s whiskers. The transcript which follows, is as faithful an interpretation of our interview as this editor could record.

This Editor: So good to finally meet you Andr... (remembering he ususally  prefers to go by his pseudonym) ... Leather Chaps. (a little nervously) It is OK to call you Leather Chaps, isn't it?

Leather Chaps: Slowly lowers his head to bring his lips into contact with the water which he gurgles into a slight froth, immediately breaking the tension.

This Editor: Indeed, you've had so many! I really had to do my research ahead of our meeting to make sure I was confident of what you were currently going by. I would have been embarrassed to have turned up today and introduced myself to "Audrey Chapburn" or "Chappel Strudel"!

Leather Chaps: Submerges to the eyebrows, the gurgling becoming a stream of bubbles that break playfully on the surface.

This Editor: No, I didn't realise you'd been "Chapping Sodbury" between "Chappel Strudel" and "Leather Chaps", that could really have caught me out. If you don't mind me asking, how did you get into the habit of giving yourself these new names with such regularity?

Leather Chaps: Remaining submerged, he paddles on the spot, his stream of bubbles becoming more intermittent.

This Editor: (understandingly) Yes, it can be.

Leather Chaps: Ascends to draw his head fully from the water, drips seeming to coagulate along the Catfish whiskers.

This Editor: Ahh, hence, "Bohemian Chapsody". And so that was it? Every six months or so a new one - "Careful, if you do it like that you're going to Chapsize the boat!", "Lady Chapperly's Lover", "Now Chaps what I call music!"

Leather Chaps: Thrashes about emitting a wet shlacking sound.

This Editor: Hahahaha! Yes, or a ribbon!

A period of hearty chuckling ensues; Leather Chaps bobbing rhythmically in the water, as this Editor gradually eases into guffaws which die away, despite threatening to break out into full scale laughter all over again -

This Editor: (collecting himself) On that note, I suppose we'd better get onto the Catfish. I take it, you weren't naturally drawn to beardery and men's grooming?

Leather Chaps: Lowers his head, this time gurgling through his nostrils.

This Editor: No, I can imagine. That's very poignant in a way.

Leather Chaps: Goes down through the gears with his gurgling, settling at a low glug.

This Editor: So, why now then for your first foray into the world of beardery? Aren't you worried that people will accuse you of jumping on the bandwagon? Of course, this is not my opinion, but I can just hear certain disgruntled beardery hopefulls complaining, "Oh he's only made it on Pimp My
 Beard© because of his rotational nomenclature!"

Leather Chaps: Draws himself up, displaying the shimmering Catfish in all its glory and holds himself there a moment.

This Editor: (wistfully) Yes. Yes, I suppose you're right.

Pimp My Beard Season 3: Round 1

Common Cents

Dollar Dollar bill y'all? Oooh, lets catch the Euro Star! Swap your daughter for some Dinar. Slap your Shilling around. Get your hands dirty in the Zloty potty. Rub one out at the Rupee raffle. Can't you see it's all Wong? Pawn in our Pesos as we Pound the vadge of the Cypriot Lira? Get Real, Brasil! We need to talk about Capitalism. A penny for your thoughts.

Nothing delights the PMB community more than to welcome a new member to the bosom of our velcro embrace. Season 3 is thus pledged to the next generation; the dewy eyed, bushy lipped progeny that must carry the clippers whence the grooming fathers have passed on. Firstwhile, we present Gavin Humongous Finney, with his dashing diatribe, Common Cents.

Gavin Humongous Finney: Common Cents

"Like so many of the kids in our town, my squad and I would while away our summers on the banks of the River Wey, satirizing swans and chewing lightbulb filaments for kicks." Recalls Finney. "Then one day, Martin didn't turn up. He'd got a job running girls and liquorice for a corporate financier in Lewisham. I was only a junior member of our squad at the time but I was indignant. I couldn't believe that he was gone, just like that. Swept away to a life of six figure transactions, as many Kit Kat Chunkies as he could eat, while here we were sharing out a single bar between five or six of us -  freezing it beforehand, so it broke more evenly. It was watershed moment in my political awakening, I just didn't know how best to make my stand. It was a painful existence - never finding expression for the sickly injustice that welled in my pancreas. That is until I came across an article anticipating the 3rd Season of Pimp My Beard™ that had been used as a coaster in my local Nero's. I ran home past the river to get an especially snide barb in at the swans for old time's sake, and got straight to work. I never thought anything would come of it when I sent away the photos during PMB's last unsolicited submissions window. Many of our old squad have moved on now. Several more snatched away in their prime by the claws of Capitalism to work for hedge funds, wholesale foods, government and the fisheries. I just hope that seeing my old mug bearding the burden of a dollar sign knocks some Cents back into them! Last thing I heard Martin was doing the fonts for numbers on the Nasdaq. Perhaps if this reaches him he'll give me a call."

Pimp My Beard Special: Pimp My Si!

Diminishing Returns

Nissan's legendary debut in 2011

In 2011, an up-and-coming freelance male grooming consultant embroidered the face of masculinity with a message for our times. As soft as lambswool, yet with the intoxicating odor of cuban cigars and plimsoles fresh from the factory, Lip Candy was born. The message, was simple: Pass The Hoi Sin, Immediately. I'm Gonna Smother This Mother! Now, moutachioed sage and all round pheasant, Nissan, returns with a manifesto for the metrosexual man. 

Striding into PMB's studio in Maida Vale like a cat in pyjamas, Nissan stops and takes a discerning look about him. "So this is where it all started, eh?" I humbly correct him that we moved premises from Canning Town in 2013, before inviting him over to what we're contractually obliged to call, The Remmington Total Groom Zone. The razor giant offered to facilitate our move following suspected arson from a rival beardery magazine. Complications with our insurance meant it was necessary to avail ourselves of Remmington's generosity, despite the funding proffered by our most eminent subscribers. Without what Remmington were putting on the table however, we wouldn't have been able to offer the in-house beardery that had become this editor's solution to the increasing competition from copy-cat facial hair weeklies that had been springing up all over the place since the summer of 2011. I explained all this to Nissan and he quipped amiably that he hoped Lip Candy had had nothing to do with it all. I remarked that the unprecedented popularity of Lip Candy undoubtedly sparked a wave of beardery movements at that time, yet any competition that it had generated for PMB was tenfold compensated by the privilege of being the first to review his now iconic tache. We shared a moment contemplating this. It evoked a scene of Bono and The Edge reflecting on recording The Joshua Tree whilst sitting on the veranda of a house one of them had just bought with its proceeds, which were still rolling in many years later. Nissan glided over to The Remmington Total Groom Zone. He eyed its ample resources with circumspection as he ran his finger idly across the porcelain of the newly-installed Armitage Shanks deep-basin sink. I was about to ask him what he had in mind for the special edition when he commandingly held his index finger aloft and pressed it to my lips. I knew the time for talking was over. Hailing the photographer with a subtle gesture, so as not to disturb the artistry of our guest, I sat down and watched Nissan go to work. 

Nissan. Diminishing Returns, 2015

For three and a half hours I looked on, entranced, as Nissan produced his tryptic: Diminishing Returns.

"It's all about the process," says Nissan (his first utterance, fully 80 minutes into his sculpting). "After Lip Candy I experimented with other styles and nothing felt comfortable. Everything felt contrived - I knew who I was and I was Lip Candy. Every step I took away from it, diminished me. Yet,  determined not to pass into beardery intransigence - which has been the downfall of many tache luminaries - I knew I couldn't just rest on Lip Candy forever. That's when I starting thinking about the myriad moustaches that must be hidden within Lip Candy. I've named this approach Diminishing Returns as a warning to those heavily involved in the beardery scene. Of course it's part of our vocation to experiment, to be pioneers, to break new ground, yet it's frivolous if our work loses sight of the essence that drives us to do so. I believe that is the difference between fashion and style."

A true gent to the last, we sat and discussed moorings and anchorage for light to medium weight non-commercial vessels over a couple of milky teas before it was time for Nissan to leave. Slinging his tan leather jacket over his shoulder, Nissan casually mounted his scooter and flicked a military salute my way. He patted his trouser pockets for phone - wallet - keys, before zipping off to the next of his day's engagements, endorsing a new ready meals venture by Pascal Chimbonda.

I Reckon

Songs from 2008-2015

Pimp my Beard Season 2: Round 2

Brave New World

When, in the winter of 98 (I was on a skiing holiday with a lesbian named Crayons) this editor was quizzed on the subject of transgender beardery, this editor is ashamed to say that he scoffed at the idea. “Show me a woman, or a 60-40 hermaphrodite for that matter, with a fully seeded beard or moustache and I’ll show you a man in a dress.” He said, before it was pointed out that some women do carry an amount of upper lip fluff; “But does it bristle?!” He boomed, scaring a nearby vole into river, “Does it resist a stiff breeze, harbour crumbs and seem to growl at the touch?!” The enquirer had to admit that it did not.

This editor now reproaches himself for such defensiveness. He has now known several women and no longer fears them or any possible attempts to usurp the theatre of beardery from menfolk such as they might make. In short, and by means of an overdue apology, PMB welcomes its first transgender beard, modelled here by Emily, “The truncheon” McNulty. PMB regards this a significant moment in beardery and Emily, not Pankhurst, had this to say, “Finally some recognition you utter shits.” And later this, (gruff voice, perhaps that of a Northumberland butcher) “Dodgems, dodgems! One pound a quarter hour!” The Truncheon's comments elucidate the duplicitous nature of both sexuality and the beard, and by calling into question her sanity, that of personality itself.

Could there be a more fitting epitaph to single sex beardery?

Drawing this historic round of Pimp my Beard to a close, we humbly ask that when beards and breasts hit the front covers of the tawdry fashion and "celeb" magazines, you remember that you saw them here first, as we welcomed you, to a Brave New World.

Pimp My Beard Round Season 2: Round 1

The Able Mason

Having taken a hiatus from PMB to "rethink himself", Browning returns with this uncompromisingly 3 fingered ( middle finger of left hand, v or "peace sign" on right hand) dismissal of narrow beardedness - the struggle against which, the followers of PMB make their daily toil.

 In typical firebrandish tone, Browning told us, "As PMB has grown, its principles of beardery have disseminated futher and wider and while these have been received gladly onto many a face across the continents, they have also come into conflict with some of the more conservative elements in mainstream beardery. We're told, 'You can't work in a paper mill with a beard like this, you can't come into this supermarket with a beard like that.' People need to be able to see the beard, but also to see beyond it. At PMB we've grown up with the philosophy that a beard is both expression and mask and we've had enough of people saying, 'That's a bricklayer's moustache, oh well, you must be a bricklayer.' Maybe this bricklayer's also a dancer, or a javelin expert. We've got to persevere with beards that teach the obstinately narrow bearded, that this can, and often is the case."

 To promote that message, Browning gives us, The Able Mason. Cult goer by night, wolf whistler by day, this is the art of expecting the unexpected; this is the geometry of biggotry. One fears however, that the subtly of this lesson in beardery may be lost on precisely the narrow bearded conservatives that Browning hopes to reach. Nevertheless, PMB and Browning will fight to the end, "People say you can tell a lot about a man by his beard, well I've decided to wear my beard on my sleeve."



Pimp my Beard Season 2 Round 1:

The Commuter

Mirror Mirror on the wall, who's got the dopest moustache of them all? The answer, yet another of the boisterously bearded young men to be found delivering their portfolios to offices of PMB in recent months, Andrew "The Commuter" Bell. Known to many as the Casanova of the Circle and District, Bell takes A to B travel to unprecedentedly dashing new heights. Personally holding the London Underground Zones 1 and 2 record for most head's turned per journey and rumoured to Banksy's muse, Bell poses for us here in the full splendor of his chosen habitat. Behind the camera, I was witness to a scene that tells the story of the power of this facial finess more aptly than I could ever describe. Mere seconds after clicking shoot on my Sony Cybershot DSC HV7X, an Eastern European lady and her tall friend, attracted by the play of the strip lighting as it's rays danced across Bell's silken tache, looked full on into the beam of his gaze and passed out in pure 1950's cinematic theatre. Naturally, Bell was swiftly across the carriage to fan the assortedly sized ladies with his t-shirt that he had removed with a artful whipping motion. The cool and sweet scented air soon revived the ladies who thanked him in graciously stupefied murmurs before losing consciousness once more. This was beardery at its most smoldering - give him an inch and he'll take your grandmother.

Pimp My Beard is Back! Season 2 Round 1

Judgement Day

Do I smell barbeque? Newcomer to PMB, Jonathan "The Juggernaut" Cartwright, swings into town  exhibiting some decidedly post apocalyptic panache. Disarmingly honest, Cartwright tells us, 'It was an accident! I once saw a young shepherd hand refused a cider at Chesire Inn. The prodigious rascal reappeared some minutes later with a highly relaxed caterpillar slung from his top lip designed, no doubt, to give himself the impression of being an older, more beardly endowed chap. He was immediately spotted for an imposter and duly sent packing. To this day, I have been struck by both his impish initiative and by how on earth he contrived to balance the creature, danglingly lazily from his lip, whilst matter of factly inquiring about the cellar temperature of the cider.  This was precisely the moustachioed impudence I hoped to recreate when given my bow on PMB. Imagine my disbelief when my quivering travel mirror revealed that I had unwittingly inscribed armageddon around my mouth and chin!'
   Indeed, anyone familiar with the work of Liv Tyler will no doubt understand the duel horrors of having their feuding father and finacee in space, battling against an asteroid on a collision course with earth, soon to herald the end of days. Portraying this on screen was a remarkable achievement. But reproducing such biblical foreboding's on one's face, albeit coincidentally, takes balls. Juggernaut, we, the humble folk of PMB, salute you.

The Time We Met 

Coming from where we came,

We’d seen a thing or two,

Could give a thing its name.

We’d grown in field and town,

Semi-detached from the playgrounds

Through which our playdough personalities

Had so far been squeezed.

We had survived the barbs of adolescence,

Would tease out the thorns.

We were exuberant.

With spliffs and student bank accounts to burn,

We set out, twenty strong,

Rambled down florescent streets,

Reorganising traffic cones and road signs.

We marveled at sound reflected on a domed pub ceiling;

Catching snippets of other people’s conversations,

We drank to our omnipotence,

And deftly ignored our ignorance.

We’d learnt new words and wanted to use them,

Like teleological, spectrographic, djuvet and blup.

We dragged ourselves, bleary eyed to seminar and lecture,

We quoted, extrapolated, deduced and conversed,

We spoke with authority on subjects diverse,

Over “ities” and “isms” we’d argue and curse,

Hated to back down and exchanged harsh words,

That were soon forgotten

Amid the hangovers we’d nurse.

We gleefully jumped into one another’s skins,

And bounded to music recently made our own.

We watched new favourite films,

Scoured art for significance,

Ate and learnt how to cook -

Cue Andy, he wrote us the book.

We swapped clothes and opinions,

And borrowing authors,

We frantically tattooed ourselves, with each other’s passions.

We binged on naivety,

Said things that might now make us cringe,

But we were open,

And listened to life stories with earnest ears.

Identifying and truth defying,

We stacked experiences with our own,

Played Jenga in the kitchen sink,

And laughed with delight,

To toss a coin into an unguarded drink.

We were maturing fast;

Half obeyed cleaning rotas,

And realised all the lies they told us at school.

We dropped childish prejudice;

Talked to strangers, read newspapers, accepted vegetables,

And felt pretty grown up about it.

We paid bills and insulted landlords,

Destroyed the house, but cleaned up afterwards.

We heard the thundering hooves of deadlines,

And ate biscuits -

Got jobs to pay for taste the difference.

We approached problems with reason and clarity:

How to hide a stain, get an extension?

How to film the girls and their girls only party?

Awoke from a long night,

To find we’d borrowed a board room door.

Scratched our heads, fashioned a table

And played ping pong forevermore.

In quiet moments, we looked back to where we started.

Had charged blindly down roads now clearly marked,

To arrive here. With coins tossed and decisions near,

We thought of our futures and flipped between ideas.

Paths branching out to potential failure,

If we walked up one could we walk up another?

The old adage guided those who knew it -

You can do most anything, if you put your mind to it.

Only first you had to work out what to do,

Who to be and how to go about your business.

From one another we got different views,

Got courage, love, trust and forgiveness.

Got calm words when we couldn’t think straight,

Leant on each other and saw the marks we make.

Felt hands on shoulders,

Over which we watched as we painted each other’s portraits.

Watched them grow and shimmer,

As we proudly hung them by our mirrors.

Snippy Snaps

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Pimp my Beard: Round 6

Mad Dog

In this, the last of the current series of PMB, Browning suspects he bought the extra strong Fisherman's Friends instead of the normal strength ones he usually likes. This is a beard that requires pastel fresh breath: a cool, take five inhalation before I smash your suburb dwelling face in then lecture you on crop rotation. Grown in semi arid shrub land, this is doing a crossword puzzle in your own blood, this, is Mad Dog.

Snapple Paps

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Pimp My Beard: Round 5 (with special guest appearance)

 Lip Candy

Nissan jets in from London, England to give us a taste of his casual/trim Lip Candy. 

"Lip Candy" says Nissan, "is a look I wanted to bring to Pimp My Beard ever since I first read about it the Sunday Times Supplement. We`ve seen many original, one might even say, prodigous beards in the previous rounds and while I enjoyed their chameleonic lustre, a part of me was screaming out, 'Don`t forget your roots! Don`t forget your history!' So I was delighted when the organisers offered me this spot to show young beard and beardery enthusiasts that a bold, slap in the face with a gold brick wrapped in a slice of lemon moustache still carries a strong statement in the modern era." Indeed an intransient moustache, this is a look that says on the one hand, 'This is just something I threw on before I left the house' and on the other, 'Yes, I'll have the filet mignon.' 

 Benson & Hedges

Browning takes advantage of this reflective surface to deftly sport the Benson & Hedges. A look that caters for swimming pools, large water basins such as you might find in a restraunt or soya processing plant, the sea, salt flats and the hard of hearing. The Benson & Hedges whispers slithery introspections in the ear. A look for self re-discovery, remodeling, finding the inner bank robber, taxidermist or late 18th century rural pastor.

Looking for yourself? Look no further than the Benson & Hedges.

Staring at the Dead

Mummy shook me from my trance,
Many years of minimal feeling.
Mummy shook me from my trance,
Her half open eyeless gaze, for days it sent me reeling,
Reliving and peeling back layer from layer,
Stories unfelt in self protection,
Stored inside my onion vault mind.
Mummy shook me from my trance
And my head begins to bloom.
Delicate petals: hurt, triumph, sadness, love and anger,
All class of colours burst in motion capture reaching for light and air
And blur into one stupifying sense of existence.
Perfect, speechless. The narrowest point of vision that cones infinitely and all encompassingly.
And dries the mouth, coats the body, invades every movement and seems like death.

I think back to those eyeless eyes as I begin to stabilise,
From total sensation back to my plateau of expected association.
Of things that must be because of where they are and what they are not,
Of cigarette butts and forget-me-nots.
Of waste and beauty and oh I could go on,
To list it all in some collage to look like life.
But I saw with my whole body in those Inca eyes.
Absorbed five hundred years without compromise.
Lips that seemed to mouth at me.
A little girl hit by lightning,
Expression preserved - a sacrifical offering,
Buried as close to sky as she could be brought,
In the claustrophobia of my existence I could not be taught,
To let a thing be, there being no other possibility.
The bird's nest of continuous alternatives imagined for every teasing moment starts to relax and unravel.
A boy that wandered into dark woods is coming home,
Unafraid to feel, friends with the butterflies,
Seeking less to justify,
Proud to spill ink and testify,
Or be a bulb uncompromised.
Safe in the certainty of seasonal flowering,
In the cold and dark the buds are ripening.

Potosi Miners

Crouched and crooked, struggling for breath.
Going down fast, further out of my depth.
"Into the mouth of hell", one chronicler put,
Under the mountain at twelve thousand foot.
Fumbling through the catacombs,
Dust encrusted nostrils cave in,
Claustrophobia threatening.
Ghosts in the rock,
The forgotten of the flock.
Unseen, underground,
Turned to stone through centuries without sound.

Choking, scrambling on all fours,
Palms cut on jagged debris.
Pause to heave air in,
A tenth of my strength.
Up again, under helmet and overhanging crunch,
Potosi miners, hard hattest of the bunch.
Pulling minerals from the mountain,
Dragging them up and out on defiant spines, through impossile passages.
Pushing the wagon: two by two, a ton along rusting rails,
Plunging coca into their mouths, all day with blackened nails.
The leaf their only alimentation,
The green teethed symbol of this vocation.

Dense heat, stooping torchlight and broken beams,
Distant chisels pick at the seams.
Silver, Zinc, Copper, Tin.
The periodically able, where do I fit in?
Square shouldered great grandad in the ground for coal,
Saviour hero when the pit fell in.
Great man they say, but neither I nor my father's him,
Potosi miners doing themselve in.
Living forty, fifty years,
The lungs pack up and succumb to the tears,
Of wives, mothers, sons and daughters,
The numbers stack up, the sum of their fears.

Inheritance, conscious inevitability:
The miner's son joins the fraternity,
Wears its gowns but seldom frowns,
Earns more than they do in the towns.
Answers to noone, commitment to collectivity,
A creed of positivity, a law of reciprocity.
Empowered, the cooperative sets its own hours,
Selects its holidays and shares what it pays.
The living mine's memory,
It wasn't always like this:
Forced labour, six months without daylight,
Now death has a sweeter kiss.
Families round the table, dining on meat and rice,
Potosi miners, brothers in proud sacrifice.