Danger is everywhere, and therefore he refuses to have the barber shave him with a knife, lest he cut his throat. The only one he trusts is his dog, but as for man, there is no one to have faith in. Life is an ongoing deceit, harsh and cruel.

Adam and Joe once did a fly-on-the-wall parody called “The Laundrette” about some old ladies running a laundrette. Not many years later came Channel Four’s “The Salon”. I sat there thinking Good Lord. The mad bastards only went and bloody did it.

It’s always the shit things though, innit? I wish Futurama was real. It makes it very difficult to be robosexual.

Everybody knows it’s ridiculous. To the point where Philips broke the unspoken market rule and stopped taking it seriously. For ages a friend had me believe that the perpetual one-upmanship was due to a little known-secret that Gillette and Wilkinson Sword were both owned by Duracell, and could fake a competitive rivalry to the ultimate profit of both (this is a lie).

I stick to three blades, and I’m happy generally clean-faced and clear-skinned. But when things really start to get on my nerves, I treat myself by going to find the nearest barbers full of middle-easterners and I shell out for something involving 5 distinct stages, fold-out blades and various ointments. When you live in folicular penumbra, that kind of treatment entails a feeling of rebirth. At least for the face.

Having said that, there is never any accompanying [thermo-nuclear reaction/jet plane/big cat/overjoyed model girlfriend] imagery in these epiphanies so maybe you are better off with cold fusion (surely, as you say, the pinacle of man’s achievment).