Movember veteran Alex Robertson blogs on his facial hair journey throughout the month of November.
Click here for our gallery of famous moustaches
* If you or someone you know is growing a mo, send us your before, during and after pics, for our online Movember gallery.
KEY POINTS:
DAY ONE: There's blood pouring down my neck. A boom, hiss and crackle from a firework interrupts the morning radio. Have I been the victim of some ghoulish trick or treat gone bad?
No, it's November 1 and I have just shaved to comply with the rules for Movember.
Movember! A neologism of Moustache and November, coined to promote the month during which men are persuaded to forget the stubble and remember the prostate - hopefully raising some money for cancer research along the way.
So, what do moustaches have to do with the prostate, that walnut-sized gland in the nether regions responsible for putting the O in ejaculation and controlling the passing of water? Cancer of the prostate is a growth area in medicine these days and men don't like to talk about their problems, especially if they're below the belt and above the knee - groin excepted. Movember is all about getting it in the open.
Well, not the prostate exactly. More getting men to open up and saying there's something wrong and doing something about it - before it's too late. Such a touchy subject is best served on a bed of humour, and what's more humorous than grown men with hairy lips?
Magnum PI, Freddy Mercury, Salvador Dali and Hitler spring to mind when I think of Mos, but what will I grow? And what CAN I grow in a month?
It seems that moustaches (defined as shaving the face except the area above the top lip and it's immediate environs) have been part of masculinity for nearly 2500 years. They've even been mandatory: every soldier in the British army was forbidden to shave the upper lip from the 19th century until 1916, when the rule was abolished.
Other examples of moustaches as uniforms include all Turkish men over the age of 14, dastardly (especially English) villains, Italian men (to look like their mothers) and all men of a certain sexual persuasion in and around San Francisco from 1972 to present day.... all denoted by the style of moustache. So, by deciding on the shape of my appendage could give some outward sign of my professional/ethnic/sexual orientation.
This sure is going to be one complicated month.
