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6.08 /// Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

• Stephen Kay • Season 6 • Episode 8

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The monitor blinks, the gratitude flows, and then I says the quiet worry out loud: my hair is thinning, and it’s starting to change how I see myself. What follows is a candid, funny, and surprisingly tender journey through style, identity, and the choices we make when time and genetics nudge us into a new chapter.

I revisit the wild history: bleached school days inspired by footballers, loud reds and deepest blacks, split colours and blue streaks, even a beard to match. There’s the legendary Download Festival handprint cut that turned heads and sparked countless photos, and the Royal British Legion poppy design that raised awareness for veterans while landing me in the paper. Hair wasn’t just decoration—it was story, confidence and a way to do some good. That’s why the recent shift feels so personal: less about vanity, more about the loss of a favourite way to express who I am.

I open up about family genetics and the odds, small efforts with natural oils and scalp care, and the realistic path ahead. I also weigh the tough questions with humour: shave early and own the look, try to preserve what’s left, or embrace wigs as a new palette for creativity. 

I talk practicality, and explores the social side—how stigma is fading and why transparency can feel freeing. Most of all, I invites you into the decision-making: where confidence comes from, how to keep your style playful, and what it means to stay yourself even as the mirror changes.

If hair has ever been part of your identity, this conversation will meet you where you are. Stream now, share your take—shave, save, or switch—and help us keep this community thoughtful, kind and curious. If you enjoyed the show, subscribe, leave a review and pass it on to a friend who needs a nudge of courage today.

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Stephen:

Welcome to another episode of Infinite Fattle. I think I'm showing you today on my shades on the city. I think so it is. You'll know it'll stay in the description. I hope you're doing well. First off, I want to say thank you for the reaction to my episode, which was a couple of weeks ago now, but I pre-recorded last Sunday's at the same time-ish, so I didn't get a chance to really say thank you on that one because I pre-empted. I'd pre-recorded it, so I didn't know the reaction to that video. Oh my god, this is a just a way of saying thank you for the reaction to that video. Um it's gone down so well. Um It was hard for me to do, but I think it was something that was necessary for me to do in some sense, um, for my own kind of healing and and well-being, and and I've hopefully it will resonate with people and um almost educate people as into a degree, I think, of what the process is like and how stressful it can be and daunting and oh everything. So if you haven't seen that episode, it's uh episode uh six of this season, uh, and it's it's in a nutshell uh about myself and my my wife going through a miscarriage uh while doing doing IVF. So it's kind of a sad episode. I do cry. Um it's very raw. Uh yeah, thank you very much for the reaction to it. I've had quite a lot of downloads, lots of messages from people, uh, just generally, um it's been a good time, to be fair. So thank you. Thank you. Um yeah, just hang on, I'm gonna see if my camera's still recording because my monitor's just cut off. Bear with me. Hang on. I think it is. Ugh, yes. Technology is wonderful when it works, but when it doesn't work, it's very, very disturbing. Um, especially when you're recording something like this. It's great that I've got the audio, but knowing I want to do the the visual. Um, yeah, and and when things disconnect, it's it's it's almost like, why has that happened? So um yeah, it's disturbing. But anyway, thank you very much for for downloading that episode. If you haven't already listened or watched, then please please do. Uh recently, I suppose I'll go into this now. I'm saying recently the podcast's been getting quite a few downloads and stuff. The YouTube channel's really getting some views. Not like I'm no Mr. Beast or anywhere even comparable to that to be honest, but it's just nice to see that people are engaging and and and are actually watching the video format rather than just listening as well. So I'm getting kind of a shared demographic at the moment, which is nice. Uh, but definitely that uh one from a couple of weeks ago is has really took off on YouTube for for my YouTube channel at least anyway, so thank you. Um and I hope you like the last one as well about uh me meeting celebrities or potentially meeting celebrities when I've uh when I was at work uh at Crew Station many years ago. Anyway, baldness is the topic of today. Mainly my own boldness, uh because it is a thing, it is something that worries me. And it's the reason why I'm not wearing a hat today, uh is mainly because I always show off my semi-luscious locks. Um Baldness is a thing that's worried me since I've been a child. I've always liked my hair, I've always liked to do stuff with my hair, I style it, be a little silly, and I know the genetics in my family aren't the kindest, let's say. So I'll leave it at that. Um so yeah, I I I kind of assumed at some point I would go bald or have thin hair or something like that. Um and that's partly the reason I've done so many wacky things to my hair. And I'll come back to that. But just over the last like probably year or so, I've noticed my hair's thinning on top a little bit. Uh and I do have long hair, and I've loved love having long hair. I do like having short hair as well. There's something for for short hair. Um, but I've noticed it's thinning a little bit, and I've kind of got to make a decision. My hairdresser told me this as well. Um and I kind of gotta make a decision what I'm gonna do with my hair now. Um do I go shave it off? Do I do something wacky before? The one last hurrah kind of thing. Um because like it's a big thing. I think people think about women going bald, which is a which is a massive identity thing for a woman, but it means a lot to a man as well, you know? It means a lot for their identity too. And as someone that kind of assumed they would be bald at some point, um, it's no shock that it's kind of happening. I think I've retained it longer than some people in my family. I think my dad was going bald probably in his 30s, to be honest, mid-thirties. Um, and my dad does still have hair, but he's got the kind of like typical kind of male pattern male patterned baldness. Yeah, like kind of like the monk kind of baldness where the top of your head goes and the sides remain. Um he kind of shaves his really short now, so the hair he does have you can see, but it's very short and grey. Um and he actually looks good with short hair, and so do I really. So I'm I've never been kind of overly concerned with being full bald. Um it's more been the thing that I like the option of doing stuff, like I like the option of having hair and being able to style it. And as such, that option's gonna be removed. And I think a lot of my identity when I was younger kind of came from the freedom of doing stuff with my hair. Um because it's something you can you can always mess with and and and experiment with and you can change it, you know. If you don't like it, you just shave your head and grow new hair. It's kind of quite freeing in that sense. Um yeah. So I think I think I if I'd have inherited the jeans from my mum's side of the family, I think a lot of their their side of the family, my mum's side in Ireland, um kind of keep their kind of hair, uh, or at least to a lot later in life. Uh I mean my mum's uncle uh was had jet black hair till he was well into his 80s. Um it was a weird thing, really. So it sounds really strange because he had full head of hair, and even to the day he died, he had a good head of hair. But it was really strange because he he had jet black hair and he started to go grey, and over the space of like a year he went full grey. And I actually said to my mum, it was kind of an insensive statement, really, but it's how my brain kind of operated, and I kind of made the statement of I I'm scared for him. It was a genuine empathy, concern kind of thing. I said, I'm scared because he was a wonderful man, and I said I'm scared because like it's like E.T. And mum was a bit horrified, I think, because she was like, What the hell do you mean? And I was like, Well, E.T. went white and died. Uh and I wasn't trying to be insensitive, but essentially, that's what happened to him. He he went completely white, like white, Arctic white hair, um, very quickly, considering he'd been jet black hair for years, and unfortunately, when his hair was white, he he got ill and passed away. And I I don't know whether that's like that was like a a thing that his body did um to show that. But it sounds a bit insensitive me comparing him to E.T. but it was the only thing I could think of at the time being young, uh or a lot younger than I am now, um, is to make comparison to him. It was a genuine fear for me because I I loved the guy, like he was he was one of these chaps he would say, I'm gonna go for a wee walk, do you want to come with me? And it'd be like a 20-mile walk he'd go on. He was he was insane, he'd he'd walk miles. Um But yeah, my mum's side of the family are are very much like that. My granddad had pretty much a full head of hair until the day he died. Like he'd he'd gone kind of like um I don't know what they call it, where your hairline recedes up here a little bit, kind of like Dracula kind of thing. He'd he'd gone a bit like that. There's a name for it, I can't think what it's called. Um but apart from that, he had good thick hair still, really. Um But I think I've inherited my dad's side, maybe a bit of a mix, because I'm a bit later going bored than some people in the family, but I still have reasonable hair at the moment. Um But I've bought some stuff to try and combat that. I've bought some like this oil, natural oils, and apparently it's meant to encourage hair growth, and I've got this like silicon brush, it's meant to stimulate your blood vessels. So I'm I'm trying now. I've had to bite the bullet and say, you know what, if you want to retain your hair, you're gonna have to actually try and do something. You can't will it into being. Uh, like many things in life, um, which upsets me. It'd be so much easier if you could do that. Um but the world would probably be a terrible place if people could just will anything into existence. Yeah, let's not that be a thing. Um let's not that be a thing. Is that is that a correct sentence? Let's not that be a thing. It sounds right but wrong. Anyway. Um yeah, and I when I w when I started the first time I ever dyed my hair, I think, was when I was at school. We went through a phase of it was probably ha like an MM thing where and footballs well it probably was a bit too early for MM actually. It was probably a football thing. Went through a phase of it was probably David Beckham actually. I think David Beckham, thinking of it, dyed his hair, like bleached his hair for was it Euro 96 potentially. Probably be the right age for me at that time. Um in uh in high school, which for Americans is just um I don't know what it is for Americans. It's like high school's our college, I think. So it's just their like seniors maybe in school. Um you call it a senior school in the UK or or a high school. Um I've probably just confused a lot of people there. But I was I was about twelve or thirteen. Uh and anyway, David Beckham, I think it was, and a couple of other football players dyed their hair, like bleached them, so they had like bleach white blonde hair. Uh so it became a thing at school, and I begged my mum because I wanted to fit in with everyone that was doing it, and she agreed, which she says you're not doing it in your own, because a lot of my mates had just done it in the houses themselves with peroxide. Mum said, if you're gonna have it done, then I'll take you to a hairdresser's. So she she actually paid for it to be properly done by a hairdresser so it wasn't like hadn't gone green or yellow blonde, it was actually proper blonde. Um Yeah, it was and that was kind of like the start of it really, and it felt good to have that bit of a change. I was quite chunky in school, so it kind of made me I I like to think it made me a little bit extra cool because I'd done that because like it was kind of really the cool kids that were doing it and not me. And I I had like my demographic of friends at school was kind of weird. I could probably do a podcast on that. Um I kind of knew the cool kids and the geeky kids and the music kids and some of the naughty kids as well. Um I was kind of a a friend to all, so so to speak, I suppose. Just got I just I just kind of get on with anyone. Um which is I suppose kind of nice really. But yeah, I was just I that was the start of me dyeing my hair, and then like at different functions at school, like I had a couple of bit times where it had like streaked highlights, and then there was one time I had streaked blue highlights, and that was the first time I had colour of my hair. We went on holiday, I think it was to Spain, and my mum said for the holiday that I could have my hair um highlighted in like like blonde streaks, and and I asked for blue dye, and uh I was allowed this shocking blue blue dye, you know. It was a it was ace. I f I felt like dog's nuts if I'm honest with you. I felt like like no one's gonna have this haircut, and unfortunately a lot of people had streaks in that, so it wasn't really unique. Um but it was really cool for for the time I had it. And I think when I became like an adult and turned 18 and I could do stuff myself and I'd kind of embraced my own personality, I'd kind of had hid a lot of stuff from people at school about what I truly was into, especially music taste-wise and how I wanted to dress. And being the only person from my school that went to the college that I did, uh high school I think for Americans, um when I was like 17, I I could kind of embrace that a little bit more because I knew I wasn't gonna be judged. So the blonde hair came back occasionally, sometimes I dyed my hair different colours, like red and blue, and when I kind of entered the world of work full-time, it kind of had to stop a little bit because there was a there was a policy, even though I had a part-time job on the railway, policy isn't fully applied to me because I was like zero out of contract. So when I full full-time started on the railway, I had to kind of adhere a little bit more, which was which was a pain really. But I used to have my fun, the policy was natural colours only, so I used to dye my hair natural reds, natural blacks and and blonde and stuff like that. Uh something that was more in keeping with a natural colour, but when I did it, I went to like the darkest of black natural colours, the the the reddest of red natural colours, and that was a red colour to be fair. I was quite it was like a proper rusty red, it was bright as well, it was cool. Um but yeah, I've always liked to experiment with my haircuts as well, not just the colours. So um I'm trying to think of all the colours I've had actually. I've had purple, um blue, I've had purple and blue, half and half. Well it was bike purple and pink really, like shocking pink. I've had um blonde I've had green-ish tints, like edges. Uh they went to quite blue but they weren't green, which was weird, but they looked cool. Um I've had pink tint as well. I've had streaks coloured, streaks not coloured, just blonde. I've had my hair dyed. Um completely completely s completely bleached over. Um and I've also had my beard dyed as well. Uh there was a time I had long hair and I had the tips dipped, like uh Ozzy Osborne, so I had them dipped red and I had my beard dyed like a reddish purple. Um and then the haircuts I've had as well. I've had like Mohicans, I've had my head completely shaved, my beard long, bald head, um, and I've had bald face long hair, which looks weird. I look like a potato with hair. Um and I've had my hair plaited like a Viking, like undercut. Um yeah, a lot, a lot of stuff I've done to my hair. The one of the craziest ones, which I which I adored, and I'm probably in loads of people's photographs from a download festival, which is a big rock festival in in in England, uh held at Doddington. Um and I had a a hand print on my head, so basically I drew round my own hand, cut it out of a cardboard, cut out drew round my hand on cardboard and cut it out, and then I went to the hairdressers and he basically cut round it, so I was bald apart from this furry handprint, uh, which was my my right hand. Uh was it my left hand? I think it was my left hand because I'm right-handed. Uh that makes sense. And he got it purple, so I had this purple purple handprint on my head like that. And that's the haircut I had for going to the Downwood Festival. And um that was 2006, I think it was. And uh yeah, I got I got stopped so many times, like I'd I'd I'd be walking down the street and you could see people going, What is his hair? And then I'd just do that, and they'd be like, Is that a hand on your head? And I was like, Yep. And uh so that was pretty cool. That was pretty cool. And when we went to the download festival, there was people stopping me left, right, and centre saying, 'Oh my god, can we have a picture of your head?' Like that haircut's mental. So my mates were like, That you're like a celebrity. Like I had probably dozens and dozens and dozens of pictures with people. No one none of them you could see my face. It was literally me bending over it just to see this handprint, this purple fuzzy handprint, but it was it was hilarious, and uh people thought it was mad for having it done, but it's just you know, you only have hair once, I suppose. Uh and then when it's gone, it's gone. Um yeah, so I had that done. And another time I had uh for the rubbish legion, I had a poppy, the rubbish legion poppy shaved into the back of my head. My hairdresser did that as well. Um it was even it was even dyed. There was a leaf that was dyed green, and the middle was dyed black, and the poppy was red, and then I was bald apart from this poppy on the back of my head, and I just did that to like raise awareness for the poppy appeal, because I was heavily involved with the rollbullish the Roebish British Legion at the time, which is a charity in the UK to help veterans. And I did it just to raise some awareness, and uh again I was in the newspaper with that, and people would stop me and go, Oh my god, you're the the poppy guy that saw you in the newspaper, so that was pretty cool. Yeah, getting recognised and and people for saying oh that's pretty cool. And I I just say to people, I said, Well, if you think it's cool, just donate some money to the Raw Bridge Legion. This is literally what I did it for, just to just to highlight that cause I was I was very passionate about at the time. And I still am, I still I'm not a member of of of not as involved anymore, but I s I still contribute to that charity every year. I think it's a it's a wonderful charity, and uh help my dad out uh as well. Like you know, they they help my dad out at times uh when he left the army. So thumbs up. Um yeah, so I've had I've had many and many haircuts, so you can see why I'm a little bit anxious about losing the locks. Um But I'm also okay with it as well, in in some sense, because I I always said that I'd probably never never wear a wig, but I'm also thinking actually it opens a door of opportunity, doesn't it? Because I I wouldn't have any hair, because if as soon as I went too too pattern baldness, I too many as soon as it started to look too thin, basically, and it was too obvious, which it's kinda getting that way. I I would just go bald, I think. I might have a one last terrain, crazy haircut, and then I would just go bald. Um but it opens up opens open does open a door for crazy wigs. Like, would I wear crazy wigs? I think I would. I think I would, because like I've never been bothered about changing my hair wildly. Um I think the only thing with about a wig is if you've got shaved head and you put a wig on, you can't you can't there's there's no transition, is there? It's an instant transition. It's not like someone meets you next day and goes, Oh you've grown grown a head of hair, because that doesn't obviously happen. Um Whereas when I've done stuff to my hair before, I've had to wait for it to grow to do something, so it's probably less shocking. But I'm thinking, well, people would know I'm bald, and the people that didn't know I was bald would just think I had a cool haircut. So I don't know, maybe I'll become a wig collector and give my wife something else to kind of be disappointed in me about. Uh because I'd be collecting something else. Uh but yeah, I I just um I just don't know how I feel about it fully yet. I I'm trying to save it because I'd like to keep my hair, I'm trying to trying to save it. I would like to to sustain a head of hair uh as long as possible. Um I understand it might not be possible. Yeah, I'm just I just I just really really really don't want to be bald. But say if if I do, I'll just shave my head. Uh would I go big shaven though, that's the thing. Would I just like like would I have to would I razor blade my head? Would I go t full smooth? Um I th I think sometimes I would I think sometimes I would do it, but I think it's for me I think it should be too much work. I think that I'd probably buy one of them kind of like electric shavers that are for people with that want to shave their head. You can get one that's like a brush and you just do that within it, it just shaves your head. So I think I'd probably more likely do that than razor blade my head. Um that seems wrong as well. It does seem wrong. Anyway, um that's me on baldness. So to kind of summarise, probably gonna go bald. Don't want to go bald, trying to save my hair. If I did go bald, I'd probably wear wigs. But there you go. Um how do you feel about going bald as a man? Like, how do you feel bald about going as a woman? I think some some women, it's obviously kind of like in society probably kind of highlighted more for a woman. Um would you wear a wig if you were going bald? Um man or woman? Um let me know in the comments. I'm interested because I feel like there's still a stigma to it, but I feel like people would embrace it a lot more as well because of how people are very much very much more open nowadays, I think. So who knows? Who knows how that would go? Um Right, well, I'm gonna shut up prattling. Thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you very much for the sponsor you've given me this season. Um I'm s I'm so happy that people are receiving this season after it after nearly a year's break so well. Uh so thank you for listening. Um give me a bit of a like, subscribe, please, um, if you want to, no pressure. Uh but yeah, just take care of each other, uh, look after yourselves and keep prattling.

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Thanks for listening to InfinitePrattle with your host Steven.

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Stephen Kay

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