Sadly, I don’t share many attributes with Rob Lowe. But we do have one thing in common – a pathological fear of baldness.

In Monday's Telegraph, Lowe confessed that “One of the great traumatic experiences of my life was watching Prince William lose his hair. He’s going to be the f---ing king of England! And there’s a pill! The first glimmer that a single hair of mine was going to fall out, I was having that stuff mainlined into my veins. And that’s what I did for the next 30 years.”

And that’s one of the differences between Lowe and me, besides his dazzling looks and movie-star career. He did something about his incipient baldness – while I did nothing. Lowe’s right when he says about vanity that “British men set a low bar”. I was agonised about losing my hair, but didn’t do a thing to stop it.

I remember exactly the moment I saw that first – literal – glimmer of baldness. It was just after a family funeral when I was 30. A photo showed me from the back – those pictures, like photographs from the top, are the killer baldness shots – with a very faint halo around my crown.