Men learn to shave the hard way, writes Anders Larsen

You started when you were a teenager. You thought you had a chance with a girl you knew. So you went down to the supermarket and picked up a disposable razor and a can of shaving foam. It didn't cost much. There was no older male relative to offer advice, then or at any time in the future. Certainly not your Dad. Apart from anything else, you never asked. Instinctively, you knew that real men had to go through this on their own. You were going to look like Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, maybe even John Wayne. That girl was as good as yours. Half an hour later you were rinsing bloodstains off the sink, and your face looked like you'd stuck it in a blender.

And after you'd finished with the blade? Here came the good part: you could splash on the aftershave, and the sweet scent would compensate for everything. It would make you smell like a man at least. Splash, splash. "AAARGH!" Napalm. When the raw alcohol burned into your face, your knees buckled. This is the standard first shave for most men. The bizarre thing is this: we don't ask for advice on shaving, ever. We go through years of learning the hard way.

We turn 40, but still don't ask our best friend what type of razor, shaving brush, soap or aftershave he uses. It's taboo. We walk around the streets with nicks, cuts, razor-burn and the stubbly bits we missed or skipped in sensitive areas. To advertise them, we stick on bits of toilet paper to flap in the breeze like little red and white flags.

But if you're feeling hard done by at your daily shaving ritual, think again. You've never had it so good. For our ancestors, things were quite savage on the shaving front. To start with, the cavemen didn't shave at all; they plucked out their facial hairs one by one. Then they invented razors made of flint or sharpened sea shells. The ancient Romans had such awful steel that their legions abandoned the use of razor blades altogether and used pumice stones to rub off their stubble.

The military dimensions of the shave were started by Alexander the Great, who commanded his troops to shave their beards off, since the Persians had a nasty habit of grabbing hold of them in battle.

So rejoice in the modern shaving technologies at your disposal. The safety razor has never been safer. With the Gillette Mach III or the Fusion, you've got more of a shaving plane than a blade. It glides across your face like a rubber squeegee. If you still can't face the thought of the blade, you can always invest in an electric - like 30 per cent of your fellow men in the western world. Be advised that if you're switching from a wet shave to an electric, it can feel like your hairs are being pulled out one by one. The manufacturers say there's a 30-day adjustment period. I'd rather just not get used to it. In fact, I'd rather use a cut-throat razor.

"Oh," you ask, "isn't a cut-throat horribly dangerous? Won't I slash myself to ribbons?" How do you think we managed for hundreds of years? Remember the words of the Prussian General Von Moltke: "Preparation is everything". Forget about the cans of cheap shaving foam. Invest in a brush, just like your Dad and his Dad before him. They knew what they were doing. While you're at it, invest in a good quality shaving foam, or soap: the ones that come in a wooden bowl or a tube. If you're doing a websearch, type in the words "Bentonite Clay" or "Fuller's Clay" and "shaving soap". The results are guaranteed good quality stuff.

For the technique itself, I've got a few wise words: ask your Dad, or any other old man, just like you should have done when you were 15.

Sharp Practice - the Real Man's Guide to Shaving by Anders Larsen is published by Transworld, £10 in UK