SORRY mum, but Prince William was never a man I’d consider a sidewards glance at, even with all the cash, cars and that palace to grow old in.
Until, that is, he grew a beard. Wills, who showed off his freshly grown facial fuzz for a video expressing his support for Team GB at the Olympics, has never looked sexier.
Who cares about the receding hairline when he’s got that kind of gloriously scratchy stubble that’ll make you wince after a quick snog before high tea at Balmoral?
By jumping on the bandwagon, the King in waiting, 42, has proved to all mere mortal men that beards are back in. For too long, blokes, regardless of their social status, have become slaves to Gillette — with many who let their facial hair grow during lockdown shaving it all back off once they returned to work.
But as a self-confessed beardy-man lover, I’m pleased to say it’s not just me who is welcoming face furniture back into the mainstream.
Take Kit Harington, famed for his role as the rugged Jon Snow in Game Of Thrones.
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Naturally, as a White Walker-hunting hardman, his beard was almost a necessity. Plus, I don’t think many blokes thought about sharpening their swords to trim off their whiskers back in the Dark Ages.
Fast forward to Kit’s role in BBC banking drama Industry, where he plays millionaire tech company founder Henry Muck.
Kit, 37, feared writers would make him take his beard off. But luckily, he made clear his feelings on being clean-shaven from the get-go — and with good reason.
“One of the first things I said was, ‘You guys are running a sexy show here. And I know you’re going to want me to shave, because it’s banking, isn’t it?’,” Kit said yesterday.
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“And I just do not look sexy without a beard. I look like a tired child.” A quick search on Google will confirm that what Kit says is quite true. And I mean that with no offence intended.
Bearded Kit could seduce womankind with a mere stroke of his moustache.
Hairless Kit looks like a prepubescent member of the Jonas Brothers who definitely still wears a chastity ring.
And he’s not alone. Swathes of Hollywood stars have admitted they’d never shave unless they had to for work.
Take Jamie Dornan, 42, who played filthy sex god Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades films.
He previously revealed: “I’ve had to shave for jobs in the past, but otherwise it simply wouldn’t cross my mind to be clean-shaven. Usually I’ll just let it get wilder and wilder.”
Then there’s Hollywood hunk Ryan Reynolds, who admits that as well as looking far better with his slightly longer 5 o’clock shadow, he actually just doesn’t like being bare faced.
Foam-smeared Santa
“Shaving just doesn’t feel great,” Ryan, 47, replied when asked about why he prefers to keep his sexy stubble.
“It feels like your face has been through some kind of trauma, which it has, because you dragged a razor across it.”
See, it’s technically cruel as well as a turn-off.
And while A-List actors such as Bradley Cooper, Tom Hardy and Ben Affleck have relished saying bye bye to their Bics, the number of British blokes spending their cash on beard transplants has TREBLED in the past two years.
On average, fellas are now forking out £4,000 on getting a fresh new facial covering in the UK, or heading to Turkey for treatment, where it’s cheaper at around £2,250.
Batuhan Kızılcan, co-founder of , one of the world’s leading hair transplant clinics based in Istanbul, told me: “Footballers, actors and influencers are far more likely to wear some form of facial hair than they were in the past, and this is having a real impact.
“Fifty per cent of our patients come from the UK and we offer hair, beard and eyebrow transplants.
“More and more men, and younger men than in the past, are asking for beard transplants. The numbers we are treating have trebled in the last two years.
“Many of our clients think facial hair makes people look rugged and masculine and they want to achieve similar results.”
I couldn’t agree with him more, and, as a lover of a rugged bloke with a bit of facial scruff, it’s music to my ears.
I’ve never once dated a guy without a beard and, to be honest, I don’t think I could.
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Nothing screams unsexy more than a man who spends longer in the bathroom than me, looking like a shaving foam-smeared doppelganger as he clogs up the plughole with bits of discarded face fluff.
Keep your beards bushy, lads, or keep the hell away from me . . .