Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of modern Ireland.
These are dark days for the Irishman's haircut. Dark-with-streaky-highlights days. A few years ago websites started popping up featuring pictures of people with mullets. Usually these barnets belonged to citizens of southern US states, men from Deliverance country, where a man's hair said a lot about his ability to wrestle an alligator. Alternatively, they were pictures of 1980s pop bands sporting the Flock of Seagulls look. This was strikingly appropriate shorthand for a hairstyle that gave a good impression of Tippi Hedren's head after successive attacks by the birds.
For a short while, then, the mullet was a half-decent visual joke: a reminder of the most ridiculous levels a man's hair could sink to if he took the time to cut the top shorter than the back.
Yet even as we were sniggering at this supposed aberration, the hypnotic power of the mullet was inveigling its way into our subconscious, and before we knew it the streets were over-run by young men sporting modern mullets. Tinted, crooked, messed to perfection. Sliced, shaved and sprinkled with a handful of Ziggy Stardust. It may be an utterly modern haircut, but it is a mullet nonetheless.
It is, of course, every young man's right to have daft hair. But other generations got it right. There remains something sharply iconic about the punk mohican. The Teddy-boy quiff represented the explosion of youth culture. The 1970s had miserable hair, too, but men then had the excuse that they were living in the 1970s, when everything was miserable. Perhaps it says something about the self-confidence of many among this generation of men that they retain their swagger despite the horror shows clinging to their scalps.
Although there is nothing wrong with a man grooming his appearance, it becomes serious when the grooming is so misguided that it overshadows every achievement of a generation. Yes, future generations will say, they propelled this country forwards to sustainable prosperity. But imagine what they could have achieved with better haircuts.
We are in a bad-hair era. We might not acknowledge it now, but our children will. And they will point it out any time the photo albums come out for decades to come. These are dark days indeed. Dark-with-a-hint-of-auburn-in-the-slashed- fringe-and-rat's-tail days indeed.