The title makes it sound as though I would have let you all decide for me, week before last, when I asked for a quick poll on the “fringe/no fringe” issue! In actual fact, if most of you had said “Fringe” then I probably would have gone for it, if only as a result of peer pressure. Thankfully, though, most of you voted “No Fringe” (or at least you had when I last checked) and really, I am quite grateful for that. Since posting, memories of my fringe have been floating back into my dreams and haunting me – blow-drying it around a brush, trying to tame it with straighteners, getting jam doughnut juice in it…

Look, though! I have had it cut – I’ve had some shaping done around the front and lopped about three inches off the length all the way around. No layering, no feathering, none of that snippety-snippety-over-the-comb that usually goes on; just a blunt, straight line around the bottom. Quite a refreshing change, actually – I haven’t had such blunt ends since primary school! It doesn’t half make your hair look thick and healthy – none of that wispy business that quickly begins to look like a frizz problem. Obviously you can only really go with blunt ends if you have hair all one length – doesn’t work so much with layers, as they have to be blended in – but this is the perfect cut for me at the moment. The length is easy-to-manage and feels youthful, and it dries quite nicely into a neat-ish style. I’m missing my long, long ponytail but I am not missing the straggly end of it that felt like straw.

I can highly recommend getting a good old trim during the winter – we’re usually told to do it in the summer to avoid beachy straw-hair but I actually think that the cold weather is probably more cruel. Did I ever tell you about the time I went outside in Vienna when it was minus 8? I ran from the taxi to the studio door with wet hair and by the time I was ushered inside, my hair had turned into proper icicles! You could hold the strands and bend them and they made a snapping noise. The hair dresser was horrified and then at lunch made me try a sandwich that was made from some kind of raw liver. They always get their revenge, these stylists…

Anyway, here I am in my photos looking nice and warm and not being fed livers. The man in the photo above is hair stylist Tom Connell at Trevor Sorbie in Covent Garden. He is listed as “top stylist” but specifically asked me to refer to him as “Master of the Universe”, and so that is what he shall be called. The Master of the Universe hadn’t cut my hair before, but he most definitely will be again! There was no messing about and I got precisely what I wanted, helped along by a few subtle suggestions from him with regards to length and ease of styling. My sweepy long bit of semi-fringe is just long enough to tie back, but let loose provides a nice bit of interest around the front of my face. Just perfect.

I had my colour done too – you may have noticed, if you watched my “Monthly Faves with Mum” video that it’s a richer, deeper blonde without being warm (ie yellowy). It’s quite tricky to get a good, rich blonde that’s on the cooler side rather than looking brassy or yellowed; it helps, I suppose, that John (Spanton, Master of the Colour) leaves a lot of my natural hair colour underneath. There’s a whole half-head of hair that he never touches, so no matter how light I go on the surface, there’s always this richness of tone shimmering beneath. John added some golden highlights around my hairline, too, for a bit of Christmas sparkle!

Another successful hair overhaul – I wish I could “press pause” on it at the moment and keep the exact colour and cut! One more photo for you; I’m including it for it’s abstract quality:

If you look at it one way, I’m lying over a backwash sink. (Looking a little like Samantha Morton in Minority Report, don’t you think? Where she predicts crimes that happen in the future?) If you look at it another way, I have a very funky Dracula-style collar going on and some kind of machinery hat.