'It felt so empowering'

Lloyd Griffith has revealed he spent £6,000 on a Harley Street hair transplant. 

The comic said he felt increasingly insecure about his bald spots, and had a wake-up call when a make-up artist on Soccer AM started sprinkling black powder on his head, telling him: ‘It’s for the cameras, so the lights don’t bounce off your bald patches.’

Writing in The Observer today, he said: ‘I was aware my hair had been thinning for the past three or four years, but I’d thought I was getting away with it. I’d comb my hair left to right to conceal my scalp and then use the "hair island" at the front of my head to try to camouflage the aforementioned comb-over… I’d heavily edit photos to make sure it looked as if I had a full barnet.

‘In comedy, you spend years trying to hone your USP, and my "character" and "voice" had always included the fact that I had hair. I was fat and I made jokes about that. I didn’t want to be fat and bald. 

‘I would scour the internet searching for "miracle cures", which resulted in spending hundreds of pounds on various potions and lotions.’

He said that for a while he was using the make-up artist’s ‘magic black sprinkles’ – actually  keratin fibres  – until he turned 40 when: ‘, I decided I was tired of both covering up my baldness and the daily logistics that came with it, having to wake up an extra 20 minutes each day to factor in my sprinkling routine.

Griffith wrote: ‘I think most people just want to feel normal. For years, I’d wake up and look at my balding head and quite honestly, I’d feel awful. I’d start the day sad and I’d have to work on myself to get out of that lull. ‘

He got his treatment done by a moonlighting brain surgeon (‘apparently there’s more money in hair than brains’) in a Harley Street clinic he likens to a five-star hotel.

‘The day itself was emotional,’ he wrote. ’I’ll think back on it fondly because it felt so empowering, as if I was doing a reverse Samson and getting my strength back. 

‘I recognise myself a bit more now, in the mirror and also within my actual self, not just because of the hairline. It’s been the biggest journey of self discovery I’ve ever taken.’

Griffith was speaking ahead of the new Australian-based crime series Return to Paradise, in which he stars as Detective Colin Cartwright, pictured above. It starts on BBC One on November 22.

Published: 10 Nov 2024