VANESSA FELTZ: Why I’ll be forever (bottle) blonde

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I blame the Beatles. It was 1967. I was five. Abandoned on the floor in my Uncle Melvyn’s bedroom lay his Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Smouldering on the cover in a sprayed-on gold lamé fishtail gown, shoulder to shoulder with Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Fred Astaire and Oscar Wilde in Sir Peter Blake’s collage constellation of stars, was our very own British bottle-blonde sizzler Diana Dors. Yes, Marilyn Monroe featured, too, but I only had eyes for Diana. She was glamour personified. Her hair was a side-parted cascade of burnished gold. For crystal clarity, please note: I am not referring to the humanly attainable shade you’d spot on every other head boarding the school bus in Stockholm. I mean the platinum fairy-tale blonde only a chemical cocktail applied by a wizard colourist can achieve.

May I remind you, back in the 60s, families like mine – we said lavatory, never toilet, ate dinner, not tea and called our living room the drawing room – were brought up to believe dying one’s hair was unforgivably vulgar. I was grudgingly allowed to squeeze lemon juice on my locks and sit in blazing sun, frying my unprotected skin, hoping to ‘lift’ my dun, dull, dreary brown locks just a little. It didn’t work. Being brunette was torture. I knew my soul was blonde. 

Imagine my delight when, in the mid-70s, a new product exploded on to the market. Sun In! You could buy it at Woolworths at a pocket-money price. It came in a plastic bottle with a nozzle. You spritzed it thoroughly, coating every follicle, then stewed for hours in scorching rays, praying for a miracle. Lo and behold, in a brassy, patchy way, that miracle came to pass. Hydrogen peroxide was the magic ingredient. It didn’t transform me into the smiling strawberry blonde in the advert, but it did turn me a cross between marmalade and traffic-light amber that was horrifying to my mother. What’s more, the metamorphosis was permanent. There was no washing out a Sun In dye job. You had to stay mottled tortoiseshell or chop off your waist-length tresses.

I was lucky. My mum marched me to a reputable hairdresser – when I think about it now, the one responsible for keeping my Grandma Sybil a spirited bronze – and they had no choice but to high-lift tint the heck out of me. In the mirror, I finally saw my real self. I was the blonde I was born to be – burnished, busty, emerald eyes brimming with mischief. The genie had escaped the bleach bottle. My mother’s face registered pure panic.

Thus began a lifelong battle to stave off the boring brunette threatening to rain on my parade. Believe me, it takes cartloads of cash, perpetual vigilance and lashings of self-discipline to be blonde when the stork didn’t deliver you that way. Much of my student grant pittance went on crucial blondeness maintenance. Subsisting on tinned tuna and own-brand pasta was a small price to pay for wafting about Trinity College Cambridge, flaxen hair floating in the breeze. Did boys imagine I’d be up for it? They probably did, and in some cases were not altogether mistaken. Do I believe ‘blondes have more fun’ is any more than a catchy cliché? I don’t care. What I do know is if we only have one life, I am determined to do and pay whatever it takes to live it as a blonde.

I aimed for something between Madonna and Debbie Harry and luckily my thick, frizzy hair was built to survive constant chemical attack. Looking like a Diana Dors tribute act served me magnificently. At 22 I was engaged to the nice Jewish doctor Grandma Sybil spotted when he turned up in her ward to give her a blood test. Are you Jewish? Yes. Are you married? No. She packed me off to Casualty and Cupid was waiting. The reception was booked, the dress ordered when the groom-to-be dropped a bombshell. Was my hair, he wondered, just a little bit brassy? Wouldn’t I look better, more elegant (more suitably wifely) a nice shade of brunette?

Lord! I should have seen a regatta of red flags waving wildly, called off the kosher caterers and hightailed it to Borneo. Instead, I trekked to Daniel Galvin’s salon and paid to go brown. It was hell. My face looked green. I was peaky and diminished. My va-va-voom evaporated. Brunette didn’t suit me. I was a brunette bride.

It didn’t last. First stop post-honeymoon was the salon and I’ve been a Cornish cream colour ever since.

I’d never dared try a home dye job. The root touch-up was an ugly shade I struggled to blend with my salon-achieved blonde. All was scrupulous and professional until the pandemic. Suddenly, I was confronted with the unthinkable: abandon blondeness or throw myself upon the mercy of my then partner, now an unlamented ex. Obviously, I opted to continue flaxen, ignoring the fact that, armed with a pot of bleach and toner, my then other half looked terrifying.

I explained vividly the perils of overlapping. I begged for care and delicacy, but I suspected due diligence was being deliberately ignored. Let’s not delve into the miasma of heartache, reflected as it was in the imploding of the relationship. Let’s focus on nurturing the nuked locks back to health under the tender ministrations of Maxine at Hershesons. No more bleach, just a gentle tint. The effect is subtler, but still buoyantly blonde.

Am I considering going grey gracefully? At the spring chicken-esque age of 64? You must be crazy. I’m a ride or die blonde and fully intend to be the blondest blonde in the cemetery.

UNDER A TENNER

Milky toners are having a moment – long gone are the old-school, moisture-stripping bottles of alcohol, with focus now turned to lightweight hydration and barrier-supportive formulas. Just launched at Boots, Q+A Hyaluronic Acid Milky Toner (£6.37, was £8.50, boots.com) contains four molecular weights of hyaluronic acid to penetrate the skin at multiple levels and lotus extract to calm. Plus it absorbs quickly without any tacky residue. Winner!

Your skin, but better

Brand new No7 Pro Artist Silk Glaze Skin Tint (£17.95, no7beauty.co.uk) is our new favourite base. Great for drier skin, it’s hydrating, blurs blemishes and boosts radiance. Tip: mix a few drops with body cream to give your limbs a filtered finish.

Bridal bronzing

The secret behind Mel C’s honeyed wedding skin? Celebrity tanner James Harknett. He used Three Warriors spray tan, but says the brand’s Self Tan Mousse (£35, selfridges.com) will give the same effect: ‘The olive oil in both formulas is super hydrating.’ A spray tan with James at W London costs £85 (jamesharknett.co.uk).