Lady T would not have one in her Government when she was Prime Minister and Ikea is reported to be banning beardies from its stores.

It doesn't affect me much as I never wanted to run the country and have no interest in buying new furniture. But it shows a worrying trend towards beardism.

Until Mr Gillette came along with his wonderful razors, life was whiskery for most men. Look at the great Victorians, ranging from Gladstone to Tennyson, and their one common feature was an abundance of facial hair.

It's odd how shaving caught on, since drawing sharp, cold steel across your face could hardly be considered a natural practice. But it has and those of us who wear beards are generally considered to be weirdos who have something to hide, be it blubbery lips, a weak chin or a severe personality disorder.

My own beard celebrates its 20th birthday this year and was grown for the simple reason that my face and neck were covered with nicks and sores through constant shaving, sometimes twice a day.

Ishall avoid throwing a party for it, unlike former Brighton mayor Joe Townsend, who celebrated 40 years of facial hair with a ding-dong. But it's staying.

Idon't care much that it probably makes me look even older than I am, that it grows in at least five different colours or that Lady Thatcher would probably cross over to the other side of the street to avoid me. But I find it strange that beards should attract such widespread revulsion.

They are perfectly natural and were women to sport them (excluding a minority who do already) they would be turned into works of art with dyes, pigtails and other adornments. Apart from a few worn Old Testament-style which tend to house parts of birds' nests and the remains of several old dinners they are clean and usually tidy .

Plenty of popular people wear them including Virgin boss Richard Branson, Health Secretary Frank Dobson (Blair has no ban on beards), theatre boss Sir Peter Hall and environmentalist Dr David Bellamy.

What's more, the great villains of this century such as Chairman Mao and Mussolini wore no beards and others such as Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein all had a propensity instead for wearing small and rather silly moustaches.

A Beard Liberation Front has been formed. Quite what it will do, apart from planting hirsute kisses on Lady Thatcher (a difficult and unpopular task) or arranging hairy demonstrations against furniture stores, I do not know.

Isuspect that a lot of the opposition comes from jealousy and is fomented either by women or by men who couldn't grow beards if they were given potting compost and a month of Sundays.

Meanwhile, we beardies will rally the great and the good to back our cause.

Step forward God and Father Christmas.

DAN, the Department of Appropriate Names, would like to thank a reader who travelled to Kent and brought back information that the the guest demonstrator at a meeting of Margate Flower Club was none other than Sheila Seed.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.