Wayne Rooney was just 23 when he realised he was losing his hair.
He admitted staring at himself in the mirror and thinking: “Bloody
hell, you’re going bald and you’re only a young lad.”
Around a fifth of men in the UK, like Rooney and Prince William, start losing their hair in their 20s.
Few resorted to hair transplants until Rooney took the leap three years ago.
Since then he has had a second transplant and there is a possibility he may need a third.
Some have not been fans of the change.
The bald truth is that Rooney will be facing Bobby Charlton of slapheadedness if he had not gone under the knife.
And his bravery in going public twice and revealing that he’d had Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) techniques at a private clinic sparked a sea-change in the Britain hair transplant industry.
In the last three years, there has been a 25% surge in men in their 20s seeking transplants.
And it’s not just men’s hairlines which get a boost from the procedure – but HER sex life.
Research shows that men like Rooney, Robbie Williams and James Nesbitt who’ve had a transplant have sex once a week MORE than those who stay bald.
The boost to male esteem from the new hair makes men more sexually confident and more sexually active.
Researchers found that men who’ve had hair transplants really do have better sex lives than men who stay bald.
Britain’s leading hair transplant surgeon is Asim Shahmalak from the Crown Clinic.
He has carried out procedures on the model-turned-actor Calum Best and Christian Jessen from the TV show Embarrassing Bodies, who have both had two hair transplants each costing around £6,000 a time at Crown Clinic.
Dr Shahmalak said: “There is no doubt that Rooney was a game-changer for men in their 20s.
“Previously very men that young thought that hair transplants were an option for them – they were seen as the preserve of the middle-aged.
“All that changed after Wayne.
“We saw in surge in ordinary lads in their 20s coming to us who, rather than getting a new car, we’re using the extra cash to transform their looks.
“They’d been shaving their head to cover up their baldness but were fed up with a permanent crew cut. A hair transplant allows them to go back to wearing their hair longer and styling it in any way they liked.”