Hirsutes You Sir

Lately I have joined the ranks of a special club of men whose age necessitates the need for a little nasal topiary, and I am now the somewhat less-than-proud owner of an ear and nose hair trimmer (clearly a long-overdue Christmas gift for the chap below).

Previously the preserve of those toothy self-made individuals typically seen on Just For Men ads, these items now retail for the princely sum of just two pounds in Tesco, and the great unwashed (of which I strive to be a hygienic member) have no excuse for cultivating those miniature tresses that often protrude rudely from nostrils and ear canals.

It’s actually quite unpleasant to use though. Once I got over the mistrust of inserting (albeit guarded) rotating blades into my nose, I found it to be not painful but immensely ticklish.

I don’t imagine its regular use will be the sort of thing that will knock years off me like a new wardrobe or a new hairstyle (not that the latter is likely anyway), but it’s a milestone in personal grooming for the thirty-something male. It’s a rite of passage which every male has to go through: like being bought your first razor as an adolescent, or wearing your first pair of elasticated-waistband trousers as you slip into old age, or being suspended by hooks in your skin in the ceiling of a hut until nearly dead in order to be accepted as a man like they do in that Amazonian tribe. I bet that’s not ticklish.