Chip Le Grand, circa 1994. A RESEARCH team from the US and Britain reckons it has finally cracked a cure for baldness. It is a particularly elegant solution, the kind that makes you wonder why you didn't think of it first. Got a pen? All you need to do is collect a bunch of freshly circumcised foreskins, implant them with human dermal papilla cells, graft the cells on to your noggin and watch your new, lush head of hair grow. In about six weeks, you should see the first wisps of frankenfollicles sprouting from your pate. A quick glance at my dinkus above might suggest I'd be thrilled at this breakthrough. A cure for baldness is one of my greatest fears. Let me explain. I'm well used to being bald. I can still remember the moment, nearly 23 years ago, when a hairdresser first pointed with the edge of his comb to the ominous gap in my hairline. It was in The Dalles, Oregon, a small town east of Portland. He was wearing boots. I was wearing side-burns. He gave me a medicated shampoo and told me to massage vigorously. The more I rubbed the quicker it receded. Over the years, I've seen all the TV ads but have never been seriously tempted to go down the surgical route. The idea of sewing rows of hair plugs into my scalp or transplanting furry bits from elsewhere on my body always seemed ludicrous. Good luck to Warney and the rest, but I'd rather say no than Yeah Yeah. The best money I've ever spent was $120 for a pair of industrial-grade clippers. That was 15 years ago and I haven't seen the inside or a barber's shop since. It hasn't been a journey without regrets, though. You might remember that Simpsons episode when Homer is given a magic hair-restoration tonic and sees his professional prospects soar. I'll admit there are times when I wonder whether, had I kept my hair, I would be running a newspaper now instead of writing a column every second week. Perhaps I chose the wrong company. Media junkies out there can ponder why bald editors and executives tend to find homes at Fairfax while News Corp's current crop of editors all have fiercely defiant thatches. Yet a quick glance along the ancestral line confirms this was always going to be my fate. My dad is bald and his dad, too. There was a time when this didn't sit well with my grandfather. One year, when I was about five years old, he came to visit us in Melbourne and walked through the doors at Tullamarine sporting a toupee. I crept into his room one morning while Papa was sleeping, snatched his rug off the bedside table and paraded around the house with it on. The roars of laughter woke Papa and he never put it on again. My own kids have only known me without hair. My daughter, while at kindergarten, went through a stage of drawing herself with Rapunzel-like locks, often being attended to by hair maidens. In barren contrast, she would draw me with a sparse covering of Texta dots on my scone. If I was to suddenly come home with news reader hair my four-year-old son would freak. So what's to fear in a potential new cure? It is one thing to be a bald man. It is another to be the last bald man. The Columbia and Durham University researchers who last week touted their success in successfully growing human hair follicles on the backs of mice say it will be many years before the procedure is declared safe for human heads. Then there is the challenge of training transplanted hair to grow at the right angle and shape and colour. But, as Colin Jahoda from Durham University told the BBC, baldness will eventually be treatable. Please let it be after I die, or am otherwise too doddery to realise the altered landscape. Having taken my hair, don't give me the indignity of having to walk in a world where baldness is something that used to happen, along with bad British teeth. Spare me the sniggers from young blokes, the stares from frightened children. As for my own sons, enjoy your hair while it lasts, boys.