Haircases who dyed for Ireland

I get some strange e-mails here in Emissions Towers. Most offer to dramatically increase the size of a certain part of my anatomy, make me utterly irresistible to sentient beings of all sexes and shower me in unimaginable wealth. Naturally, I delete them unthinkingly.

Not that I'm averse to help in any of those departments per se. It's rather that I'm a tad wary of posting my passport and latest bank statement to the Queen of Swaziland's second cousin's former butler, who is beseeching me - after picking me personally from the ranks of the planet"s six billion-odd inhabitants - to help him launder the $172 million he has stashed in his Lagos bolthole.

And then there are the surveys. Insurance companies are great fans of commissioning marketing charlatans to compile inane "research" for them to plug as a ruse to garner free publicity (you know the type of thing: "100 per cent of the two people we asked said McShyster's Insurers were the greatest insurers on earth. 'I think they're the greatest insurers on earth,' said delighted customer Mick McShyster. 'And so does my wife'.") Guff, guff and more guff.

Only rarely do I bother reading them. But I couldn't resist this one from a British insurance company called Sheila's Wheels. It warns women drivers that their choice of haircut could potentially cut short their lives. It reserves particular scorn for long, eye-skimming fringe hairdos like the one sported by Kate Moss and the really foxy one in Girls Aloud. Such styles can bring lady drivers to within a hair's breadth of disaster, it says.

The statistics are somewhat hair-raising. Some two-thirds of the 1,000 women surveyed said their hair can fall in their eyes. Of these, only half said they bothered tying it back before driving, and 57 per cent admitted to taking their hands off the wheel to adjust it in the mirror or push it off their face. Only 57 per cent? Cobblers. Every woman does that. And lots of men too. I think something is being pulled over the surveyors' eyes.

The most-touted excuse for driving with unsecured hair was that women didn't think theirs merited such restriction, while one in 12 confessed they were willing to run the risk of crashing because they didn't want to ruin their expensively-maintained barnets (this hair-brained minority are evidently members of some lunatic fringe group). As a result, 1 per cent of those with bothersome bouffants admitted to nearly crashing because their hair got in their eyes.

I would suggest the solution to the problem is for laws to be passed requiring all women drivers to shave their heads to an egg-like smoothness. But while I think such a move would be shear genius, I fear it'd never wash. They'd all flip their wigs.

So instead, I'll resort to an appeal to all hirsute lady motorists - please be careful behind the wheel. Tuck your flowing tresses behind your ears or under a hairband or pair of shades when you drive. Your life may depend on it. It could be a case of hair today, gone tomorrow.

I think that's quite enough dreadful hair-related puns for now. Excuse me while I go off somewhere quiet to curl up and dye.