Around 75m years since a mighty intergalactic leader somehow triggered the existence of today's Scientologists, the interests of their religion and t… - Catherine Bennett

With hindsight, we can see that if Cook's loyalty to his facial hair did not actively foreshadow his later determination to stick to his principles, it was, in the intervening years, a sign that some important part of him would never be a smooth, New Labour man. While Peter Mandelson, Stephen Byers, Alistair Darling and Geoff Hoon all recognised that hairiness is inescapably associated with woolly, unreconstructed leftiness, Cook stayed firm.
After he completed his speech on Monday night, he sank back into a veritable hedge of springy backbench furze, a brigade of hedgehogs led by Jeremy Corbyn and Frank Dobson, whose beards, now that Cook's has joined their number, are recognisable as individual acts of in-your-face defiance. In fact, with this week's principled resignation from the shadow front bench of the only bearded Tory, John Randall, New Labour's Tebbit-like suspicion of hairy ministers ought to become, if anything, more intense.
While Blunkett's beard is explicable, there must now be suspicions that Charles Clarke's stubble is nothing less than a signal to disobedient backbenchers that he will not be long in joining them. Resignation or the razor, Clarke; the time has come to choose.

As Mrs Blair never speaks in public other than about solemn matters, far removed from personal grooming, the only reason we know about [beautician Bharti] Vyas's handiwork must be because Vyas is apt to mention it. So much so that these days Vyas's name is rarely to be found, in her extensive media appearances, without some reference to that ultimate respectability-clincher, Mrs Blair's patronage. Is it possible to imagine a more compelling recommendation for a miracle-worker such as Vyas, a woman who believes that drinking "magnetised water" can "help control", among other things, cholesterol levels, obesity and hay fever? While, a few years back, the patronage of the Duchess of York would instantly confirm to any right-thinking woman the idiocy of whatever she touched, the invocation of Mrs Blair's name has precisely the opposite effect. If Mrs Blair, as the duchess once did, went and sat on a stool beneath a home-made pyramid, we should remark on the impressive, if unproven results of regular pyramid-shelter, rather than speculate on the mental agility of the sitter.

How well it still works. The advancement of Etonians by Etonians, as if to compensate for the lost years of grammar school premiers, became so normalised after 2010 that it was never addressed as an actual scandal – as it might have been had the fraternity been exposed as freemasons, or ex-miners, or members of the same betting syndicate.