Gillette says that sales of its razors have shot up 30 per cent in the past year. You may think the reason is obvious. After letting themselves go during lockdown, men decided to smarten up for their return to the office. But I think the reason is actually very different.

Most men simply daren’t wear a beard any more. Because they fear being mistaken for some insufferable, woman-hating woke activist.

There’s no getting away from it. Of late, beards have become synonymous with a very specific type of man. At the weekend, JK Rowling gave them a name: “beardsplainers”. These are men who, despite purporting to be impeccably progressive, appear to spend their every waking moment on social media belittling women. And, without exception, absolutely all of these men have beards. It’s an integral part of their look. Just as punks have mohicans and monks have shaved crowns, so woke men have beards.

As a result, I fear that facial hair will forever now be associated with Left-wing self-righteousness. It’s a sad thought. Once upon a time, beards were a proud symbol of British greatness. During the Victorian era, every self-respecting man in Britain had a beard the size of a yew tree. And those, don’t forget, were the days when Britain ruled the world. The zenith of our nation’s power and status. Can it really be mere coincidence that as the popularity of the beard waned over the course of the 20th century, so too did our country’s global influence? When Delilah had Samson’s hair chopped off, it sapped him of his strength. Shearing off our magnificent Victorian beards, it seems to me, had the exact same effect on Britain.

A decade ago, the beard at last roared triumphantly back into fashion. Among men in their 20s and 30s, facial hair became close to ubiquitous. But thanks to the rise of the unbearable beardsplainers, those days are now decisively over. As with everything else they touch, the woke have ruined beards for the rest of us.

For me the development is particularly distressing, because I often have a beard myself. My look veers between “chubby George Michael” and the full Captain Haddock. Yet now I suppose I’ll have to go to the bother of shaving every morning. Otherwise, strangers will take me for some preening, podcast-plugging brocialist. Nervous pedestrians will hurriedly cross to the other side of the road, for fear I’m about to lecture them about gender-critical feminists or late capitalism.

Thankfully, there is one small ray of hope. Volodymyr Zelensky, the hero of the hour, has excellent facial hair. And no one could possibly call him woke.

Once he’s finished saving Ukraine, perhaps he’ll save the beard, too.

These eco nuts will come unstuck

They’re back. After taking the winter off, hardline climate protesters have returned to spread disruption and dismay across the land, blocking off roads and glueing their body parts to every available surface. For several days now they’ve been blockading oil depots up and down Britain. So on Sunday, the radio station LBC invited one protester into the studio, to interview him about his comrades’ latest stunts. This, however, proved to be a naive mistake. 

Because, live on air, the protester glued his hand to the studio equipment.

Such behaviour may seem peculiar. Personally, though, I was more puzzled by LBC’s response. The station rang the police and asked them to remove the protester. Surely it would have made more sense not to bother. Just leave him indefinitely in the studio, stuck fast to the equipment. Presenters could then have run a competition, with listeners invited to predict how long the protester could hold out before desperately trying to unglue his hand. And how long it would take him to succeed. They could have offered a big cash prize to the listener whose guess came closest. It would have provided hours, days or possibly even weeks of gripping entertainment.

Perhaps LBC’s lawyers feared that the station would be prosecuted for false imprisonment. But I don’t see why. After all, LBC didn’t imprison him. He imprisoned himself.

Still, too late now. The protester was swiftly freed, and his comrades’ campaign goes on. There seems to be little hope of stopping them. Unless, that is, the country finally heeds my call from last summer.

As I explained at the time, there is only one way to prevent these protesters blockading things. And that is to blockade them first. Every morning, we long-suffering members of the public must hold peaceful protests outside the protesters’ homes, sit on their garden paths and glue ourselves to their bicycles and electric cars. That way, they won’t be able to get out and cause any more disruption.

‘Way of the World’ is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines while aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday