No...Please, put it back how it was

When you are looking less than your best, you can do a pretty reasonable job of avoiding the camera. You can refrain from taking selfies and you can hide in the back row if you are forced to take part in the office annual Christmas Card shoot.

As for photos with the family? Well, they are family and no matter what you look like they shouldn't judge you: though they do, especially the kids, who are so brutally honest it hurts.

Conversely, when you are looking like a premium specimen, those of us on the extroverted side of the fence make no bones about jumping in front of a camera any chance we get: even if you have to hold the camera up yourself because no-one is interested in taking a photo of you...except you. If you are really self-absorbed you can even purchase a Selfie Stick to optimise your best angles.

Very soon I will be 'on camera', shooting an upcoming nature documentary and Karga7, an L.A. based production company, are expecting me to look like this:

Sorry guys! Not quite, though I do have a very similar shirt.

Unfortunately for them, I cannot grow facial hair and I definitely cannot credit myself with such a defined, chiseled cheek structure. I am almost certain I am unable to project that very sage, yet steely, soul-piercing stare.

Up until about two hours ago, I did have that full and robust head of thick, gnarled and richly textured hair. That was until I made the fatal error of going for a hair cut. Some say that the difference between a good and bad haircut is a week. But I don't have a week; we film on Friday.

I specifically asked the hairdresser for short on the sides (to rid me of the small battalion of grey follicles that emerge from the jungle of brown like Viet Cong emerging from the monsoonal rain forests of 'nam) and only a little off the top. Now I look like Demi Moore in G.I. Jane (with a little more stubble).

When the hairdresser asks me (and they do it every time) "How is that?" I wish I had the fortitude to say "I'm sorry, it is not very good, it is not what I asked for and, please, put it back the way it was."

"How is that?" from a hairdresser is epitomises the rhetorical question. It is a question you really don't need to answer in a situation that is essentially irreparable: the reality is, if you get a catastrophic haircut there is not a damn thing either your or the hairdresser can do about it.

The fact that I will be on camera in three days just adds insult to injury.