Viewers of the BBC News channel, now that Zoom shows talking heads in their own homes, want before anything to have a good look at the sitting rooms or study shelves of daily newspaper reviewers. But often this important task is distracted by disturbing face-foliage grown during lockdown. Jack Blanchard from Politico presents a face mottled with brown and grey like lichen on an old wall, and the curvaceous chin of James Rampton from the Independent bursts out with stubble like a ginger Desperate Dan.
This is like queuing for the supermarket in your pyjamas, so different from the profitably energetic habits of Samuel Pepys, who told his diary: ‘Up betimes, and shaved myself after a week’s growth. But, Lord! how ugly I was yesterday and how fine to-day!’
He had an excuse, for he’d spent the time, in gaps between work, putting his house to rights after the Great Fire of London.
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