It’s Friday evening. It’s past 5pm. And the capital’s office drones are spilled out on to the city streets, sipping drinks and soaking up the sun. For reasons unclear, this rotund reporter is walking among them: a bald Adonis, decked out in a floral shirt and shorts (from the Mantaray range at Debenhams). This look, I’m told, is set to be the hottest summer fashion craze for men.

Yet the refrain playing on a loop in my head is not a soothing one.

“Something is happening here,” it says. “And you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr Butler?” Frankly, I have no idea why I agreed to wear these clothes. I have no idea if they really are set to be hottest summer fashion craze for men. Hell, I’m not even convinced these items belong in the men’s section of a department store. Could this entire misadventure be a practical joke at my expense?

The fashion editor insists that florals are in style for men this season. She tells me ‘boy wonder’ Christopher Kane has eulogised the English rose and emblazoned it on trousers, shirts and T-shirts. That Givenchy and Riccardo Tisci quickly followed suit.

Unfortunately, I have no idea who any of those people are or what any of that means.

When it comes to fashion, I tend to defer to the wisdom of others. Specifically, my grandmother, who buys about 75pc of my jumpers.

But strolling through the capital today, and witnessing the candid reactions of most ordinary Dubliners, I’ve decided to trust my gut in this case. And my gut is telling me this is the stupidest outfit I have ever worn in my entire life.

Urgh, I look like a Hawaiian pimp or a shower curtain come to life.

Fortunately I have Ronan, the photographer, along to provide moral support. “Yeah, you look pretty stupid all right,” he concedes, with very little prodding.

Ronan is shooting photos to accompany this piece. He wants pictures of me hanging out in ordinary Dublin haunts, in order to perpetuate the bogus notion that these are clothes a sane person might possibly consider wearing voluntarily.

Our first stop is Grogan’s on South William Street. I selected this bohemian bar, in part, because it’s one of my favourite places in Dublin. But mostly because it’s somewhere you could walk into with blood gushing from your eyeballs and no one would pay a blind bit of heed.

Unfortunately, Grogan’s is full to capacity this evening. So I mosey onward to the more genteel environs of Peter’s Pub, a few doors up. I get a few strange looks and double takes from pedestrians along the way. One young man appears to laugh right in my face. However, he’s wearing earphones. So I wouldn’t discount the possibility that he is listening to a hilarious comedy podcast.

“Hey, Butler!” someone yells.

I keep my eyes fixed firmly on the footpath ahead.

“Are you going to the beach, Eoin?” someone else chips in.

It’s funny: if I was stuck for a few quid, I could walk in circles around Dublin all day without running into a familiar face. But throw on a figure-hugging, delph-printed matching shorts and shirt combo and the city resembles a living episode of ‘This Is Your Life’. (Do you remember THIS guffawing voice?)

In Peter’s Pub, I immediately spot two old acquaintances at a table. I take a seat at the bar and studiously try to avoid making eye contact with them. At first, I think I’m doing rather well on that front. Then it dawns on me they’re avoiding my gaze just as determinedly. Oh God, they probably think I’ve joined a cult or something.

I pretend to drink a pint of Heineken for the camera. If the resulting photos convey any sense that I’m relaxed, or enjoying myself, then I’m a better actor than I thought. Because it’s an excruciating experience.

Our next photo location is the Paddy Power bookmakers on Wexford Street. I chose this premises because I’ve never been inside a bookies shop in my life, so surprise reunions with old friends and enemies seem less likely to occur.

And so it proves. There are about six people present. All male. No acquaintances. One of the men standing next to me reeks of urine. Ordinarily, that would repulse me. But in the circumstances, I find it reassuring. I would say the vibe here right now is non-judgmental.

It’s just a pity horse racing is so brutally boring or I’d hang around all day.

At one point, as I prepare to leave, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and wonder if this whole floral smock idea might grow on me over time. After all, when I heard that Christmas jumpers were making a comeback a few years ago, I’d have bet the house against it happening. Might I not find that I am similarly mistaken about this?

Well, I could drag the suspense out for a few minutes, ‘X Factor’ style, if you like. But the short answer is no. I sincerely doubt it.

Our final port of call is Stephen’s Green. It seems like an ideal location to take photographs: ducks, bandstands, flowerbeds.

As it turns out, however, wide-open spaces also provide an exponentially larger number of people an opportunity to point and stare in my direction. Which many citizens duly take the opportunity to do.

I find an occupied bench, sit down and pose dejectedly for the camera. Ronan asks me to stare into the sky. I begin to wonder how I’m going to get home to change when this is over.

The Luas red line service was heavily populated by glue-sniffers and toddlers in lipsticks on the way in. I’m not sure I could survive a return journey.

“Up,” says Ronan. “Keep looking up.”

I fix my gaze upon a tiny jumbo jet, snailing a path across the bright blue sky. I imagine I’m onboard, journeying to an imaginary land in which I, or any other thirtysomething man in his right mind, would seriously consider attempting something called the ‘China boy look’.

When I come to, I’m back sitting on a bench in the real world, where I’m dressed like an idiot and a couple of teenagers are openly sniggering at me.

Will I make it home in one piece dressed like this? Yes, I probably will. But will this ridiculous get-up prove the fashion craze of the summer? I seriously, seriously doubt it.

A few days later, the hotel’s general manager responded to Susan’s complaints via email, seeming to acknowledge the existence of a problem.

“Unfortunately they [bed bugs] have become a major problem throughout European and US hotels in recent years,” he wrote, “and we look to have fallen victim to them.” The general manager promised to “assess the pest control contractor’s findings in the morning and contact you in the afternoon”. She never heard from him again. So Susan turned to TripAdvisor, the hotel-review website that allows customers share their experiences at more than 116,000 destinations worldwide.

With 200 million unique visits per month, TripAdvisor’s clout in the hospitality sector is unrivalled. But the website is loathed as much as it is loved. Critics point out that it makes little effort to authenticate the user-submitted reviews it publishes, leaving hotels vulnerable to malicious attacks by business rivals or embittered former employees.

As TripAdvisor announced the publication of its 100 millionth user-submitted review last month, photographer Kathrin Baumbach and I decided to spend a night in some of Ireland’s most colourfully reviewed hotels. We would travel incognito and judge for ourselves if the criticism these establishments receive is really warranted.

And there are no prizes for guessing our first port of call…

LYNAM’S HOTEL
63/64 O’Connell Street, Dublin 1

Lynam’s is not TripAdvisor’s worst reviewed Dublin hotel. But this “engaging boutique hotel” (self-described) rocketed to our attention courtesy of a series of spectacular complaints posted in recent months, including four of bed bugs, one of a fire alarm repeatedly going off in the middle of the night and one user-submitted photo of a syringe discarded in a drain outside a fourth-floor bedroom window.

Kathrin has booked us a double room, at €60 for the night. We’re posing as a tourist couple, the clandestine nature of the assignment almost making up for the hotel’s definite lack of razzmatazz.

I arrive early and tell the receptionist my wife has made a reservation. It’s exciting. I feel like the Scarlet Pimpernel.

“Your wife’s surname?” the receptionist asks.

Hmm.

“Something German,” I stammer. “I think it starts with a B.”

Well, strike one against the Pimpernel.

I take the elevator up three floors and shuffle around a series of poky corridors before finding the correct room. I coax the lock open with the cut key provided and step inside. There are two decent-sized beds. A table, chest of drawers and a pair of dog-earred armchairs account for most of the remaining floor space.

It’s rough and ready, but no more so than you’d expect for budget accommodation in the city centre. When Kathrin arrives, she looks the place over with a slightly more jaundiced eye. She points to significant mould growth on the curtains, windowsills, in the shower and on the bathroom roof.

Well, if you’re going to start being fussy, I suppose.

The window overlooks a gutter filled with moss, discarded cigarette butts and about four inches of stagnant water. There aren’t any syringes that I can see, but the gutter does seem to match the one in the photograph. In the alley below, two drug addicts are foraging in wheelie bins.

If it’s an authentic inner-city experience you’re after, this place doesn’t disappoint.

We dump our bags and head downstairs for dinner in Café Carlo. The reception desk is unmanned as we pass and the lift and stairs are unguarded. It does seem plausible that a non-resident drug addict might slip past and make their way upstairs to an unoccupied room without being noticed.

The restaurant staff are friendly, service is prompt and the decor tasteful. But it’s hard to ignore the visible plume of smoke, and scent of burning meat, that permeates the unventilated dining area. I order a chargrilled chicken fillet for €10. It comes with chips and a side salad. Kathrin orders a Margherita pizza for €9. The food is nothing spectacular, but it’s fine.

I ask Kathrin about her work. She photographs musicians mostly, she says. She reckons the Irish rock scene is very vibrant, very exciting. Well, she is from Germany, I suppose.

The 24-hour residents’ bar advertised on the hotel’s website does not exist. So after dinner, we head next door to Dr Quirkey’s Goodtime Emporium to kill a bit of time. First, Kathrin trounces me at basketball. Then we pour about a fiver’s worth of 20c coins into a gaming machine. Eventually, a light flashes to inform us we’ve won a mystery prize. That mystery prize turns out to be a 20c coin.

Deciding that’s enough excitement for one evening, we retire to our room. I’ve begun to feel rather antsy – if that’s not an unfortunate choice of words – concerning where we’re about to spend the night. By now I’ve had time to google ‘bed bugs symptoms’ on my phone and the results (‘skin rashes, psychological effects, allergic symptoms’) are beginning to test my resolve.

We decide to inspect the beds. I strip the sheets from Kathrin’s double bed. They seem clean, but the mattress underneath is badly stained. My own mattress is okay. I don’t spot any bed bugs, but then I’m not really too sure what they look like in the first place.

It is at this point that I hit upon the idea of trying to contact one of the TripAdvisor users whose reviews of this hotel inspired us to visit.

I send Susan O’Donoghue a private message via TripAdvisor and she agrees to speak to me on the phone. She tells me that she and her husband stayed here in November 2012, when they were in Dublin to see comedian Michael McIntyre at the O2. They are not usually fussy people, she stresses.

“We’ve stayed in lots of places that weren’t so nice, but they were grand. You could get a good night’s sleep. But when beds are your business, beg bugs are kind of a big deal.”

Thankfully, I’m not ravaged by bed bugs, but I do end up sleeping fully clothed, with a spare pair of socks covering my hands. My bed has no headboard and the pillows are paper thin. I have bad dreams.

The next morning, we rise early and have breakfasts at Café Carlo. The Full Irish is delicious and excellent value at only €5. But I don’t have time to enjoy it. I have a date with a hot shower.

Hotel response

Lynam’s general manager acknowledges the hotel has had a problem with bed bugs, but is currently certified free of them. He states that the hotel cannot be held responsible for what guests get up to in the hotel bedrooms. He does not believe that non-guests could gain access to these rooms as the front desk is always attended. The hotel employee who left the front desk unattended during our visit is being reprimanded.

MOURNE COUNTRY HOTEL
52 Belfast Road, Newry

It’s 8.05pm on a Thursday evening and a hard rain is lashing down on the Belfast Road. After driving around in circles for about 20 minutes, we finally pull up to a halt in the vast, empty car park of the Mourne Country Hotel.

From this angle, you’d scarcely guess that the building in front of us was inhabited, let alone that it was a hotel. It looks more like a dilapidated meat factory or a rogue cluster of abandoned parochial halls.

We grab our bags, pull our jackets over our heads and make a run for it. Inside, the reception area is modern, spacious and brightly lit – but deserted. Long corridors unfold away in either direction. There is an empty bar, an empty restaurant and a faint but omnipresent droning noise. It’s like the bridge of the Mary Celeste, or the Red Dwarf.

Eventually, a small, cheerful receptionist emerges from a back office and welcomes us to the hotel. We’ve booked two single rooms at £40 a piece. We’re undercover again, this time posing as a tourist couple who’ve just fallen out over whether or not one of them snores. (I don’t!)

The restaurant is officially closed, but I ask if it might be possible to get a late bite to eat. The receptionist smiles and assures us it won’t be a problem. Then she vanishes as abruptly as she appeared.

We take a seat in the bar and sit there for another while, wondering if anyone is going to take our order. While we wait, I quiz Kathrin about David Hasselhoff, who I’m reliably informed is a musical superstar in her country.

“Why do Irish people always say this?” she sighs. “You think David Hasselhoff is a musical god in Germany. It’s not true.” I apologise for bringing up what is obviously a touchy subject.

Eventually, the receptionist pops up again, this time brandishing menus. Kathrin goes for pasta. I opt for a jacket potato and salad. “Do you think she’s going to cook the food herself?” I whisper. Kathrin smirks. Probably.

Whoever is responsible, the food is really excellent when it arrives. The best and the cheapest we’ve had on this trip by a country mile. We talk a little more about the German music scene. Under cross examination, Kathrin admits to having owned two David Hasselhoff albums when she was younger. But she really doesn’t see what that has to do with anything.

This is fun, a lot more fun than yesterday.

By the time we retire for the night, I notice that tomorrow’s ‘continental breakfast’ of sliced pan, cereal, tea bags and orange juice is already laid out for the morning. Kathrin is from the continent, but this isn’t ringing many bells with her either. We may be the only guests staying tonight, however, so we decide to let it slide.

Our rooms are both located on the north wing, which appears to lack working central heating. There are storage heaters running but, on one of the most unseasonably cold nights of the year, they aren’t remotely effective. I try reading, but it’s too cold to sit anywhere other than right up against the storage heater, and that corner is in shade.

There’s the makings of a cup of tea on the table. But there’s only one plug socket, so I have to turn off the TV to plug in the kettle.

In the morning, the roads and surrounding hills are covered in snow. I inform the new receptionist that there is no hot water in my room. She insists that there is.

No, I assure her, there definitely isn’t. I ran the shower in my room for several minutes. It was stone cold. Kathrin did likewise. The receptionist shrugs and says she just washed her hands in the back office and the water was warm.

We agree to disagree.

Hotel response

The manager of the Mourne Country Hotel explains that the hotel is in the process of being modernised. The hotel foyer is complete. The rooms are in the process of being upgraded, with the car park due for revamping in the next phase of the project.

She apologises unreservedly for the shortcomings we experienced with hot water, blaming it on an “oversight by contractors working within the hotel”.

NAAS COURT HOTEL
Main Street, Naas, Co Kildare

This former RIC barracks once housed a prison in the basement: present management are hoping guests will stay over voluntarily. We’ve booked two single rooms at the Naas Court Hotel tonight, at €50 a pop.

There’s no parking in the courtyard, so I’m forced to find a spot out on the street. We walk through the front door and nose about looking for a reception desk. There doesn’t seem to be one. We venture right, into a gleaming horseshoe bar. That’s also deserted.

Then we hear music coming from an adjoining room beyond. It’s a large bar, surrounded by a spacious modern lounge and dance floor. An old man, perched on a barstool, is sipping a pint. Slightly above him, in an elevated booth, a DJ is busy at work. There is chart music blaring through speakers, while a disco ball sends light cascading across the walls and ceiling. The room is otherwise completely empty.

We take a seat at the bar in this deserted disco, drop our bags and wait for a member of staff to come to our assistance. After a couple of minutes, the old man next to us finally speaks up. “That’s the fella you’re lookin’ for,” he says, nodding toward the DJ.

We traipse around to him and manage to get the DJ’s attention. He finds our reservation and hands us a couple of keys. We ask if the hotel serves food. He says no. We ask if there’s anywhere nearby we could eat. He says yes. We ask if there’s somewhere in particular he’d care to recommend? “Depends what you’re looking for,” he says.

The Naas Court Hotel’s staff have been criticised on TripAdvisor for poor customer relations. I wouldn’t say that this staff member is unfriendly, per se, but he’s not being excessively helpful either.

We trudge up the stairs, through a thick, locked metal door and on to our rooms.

And what rooms. Clean! Comfortable! Enormous beds! Flatscreen TVs! Kathrin has a chandelier! I have a Jacuzzi bath! Compared to last night, we’ve landed in Shangri-La.

Kathrin again conducts her own, more forensic examination of the place. She discovers a tiny yellow stain on the carpeted floor. Who cares? I’ve got the P Diddy Suite.

After dinner in a nearby restaurant, Kathrin returns to the hotel. I hang back for a drink in one of the local bars. One TripAdvisor user complained that the Naas Court Hotel attempted to charge them for entry to the nightclub when he returned to his accommodation late. I want to see if that happens to me.

It’s after 11pm when I get back. I’m not sure if the bouncer remembers me from earlier, or I’m just self-evidently a 34-year-old man who hasn’t been inside a nightclub voluntarily for over a decade. Either way, I’m permitted to enter without any trouble.

Inside, the nightclub is about half full. Two karaoke professionals are ripping through a Jason Mraz cover. When they finish, they look for volunteers from the audience to come up and have a go. After a bit of cajoling, a young man steps up to sing Ewan MacColl’s ‘Dirty Old Town’.

“Jaysus,” a woman next to me spits. “Irish guys know, like, three songs.”

As I explore the ground floor and the extensive outside smoking area, it becomes apparent why the metal door at the top of the stairs is locked. It’s to prevent revellers from wandering upstairs into the guest rooms. The Naas Court isn’t so much a hotel, it seems, as a giant nightclub with bedrooms.

Back inside, the barman pours me a drink. Relieved of his DJing duties, he’s actually quite a friendly guy. He tells me this is a quiet night, by the venue’s standards. The Wednesday after a bank holiday, he explains, is about as quiet as it gets around here. If I happened to be here later in the week, things would be a lot more raucous.

At midnight, I decide to turn in. I mention to the barman that I had trouble opening the locked metal door at the top of the stairs earlier. He insists on sending a younger member of staff with me to make sure I get to my room okay. It’s a nice gesture.

At this point, I’m tempted to log on to TripAdvisor and post a glowing review of this place myself. Unfortunately, there’s a kicker. Even from my bedroom on the second floor, the noise from downstairs is undoubtedly bothersome. I try lying with the pillow over my ears, but the bass is still audible and I’m unable to sleep.

In the end, I decide to get up and run the Jacuzzi bath. To hell with it, if I’m going to be awake, I might as well make use of the facilities.

At 8.30am, five-and-a-half hours after I finally get to sleep, I have to get up to put a ticket on my car, so that it isn’t clamped outside on the street. When I return to the hotel, the front door is locked. I have to ring a bell to be readmitted. I inquire about breakfast and am directed to the recently vacated nightclub.

This is another TripAdvisor complaint that has proven to be accurate. Breakfast is served in the very same space where a large crowd of people were drinking and dancing only a few hours earlier.

Right now, the place smells only faintly of stale beer. However, in the aftermath of a busier night – had someone vomited, say, and a heavier disinfectant been required to clean it up – I don’t imagine this would be a very pleasant way for guests to start their day. We pay our bill and hit the road.

Hotel response

The Naas Court Hotel was invited to comment on this article but declined to do so.

Of the hotels we’ve stayed in this week, none of them have been perfect. Most of the criticism they received on TripAdvisor was fair. Some of it wasn’t. But all three hotels are managing to keep their heads above water in the midst of a devastating recession, so I would bare that in mind before judging them too harshly.

The only common complaint on Trip-Advisor that we never experienced for ourselves in any of the hotels we visited was rudeness from staff. Which seems to suggest that, when the chips are down – damnit, when the chips are inedible – a little patience and good humour goes a long way.

Photographs by Kathrin Baumbach

But customers here don’t pay the TV much attention. It’s Monday morning, it’s -5°C and we’re a long way from Tinseltown. Out on the forecourt, Eamon McDevitt is running through the names on today’s passenger list. A cancer survivor himself, he has been providing a free bus service for Donegal patients requiring radiation treatment at University College Hospital, Galway for more than three and a half years.

Two of his passengers, William and Margaret from Greencastle, have already been on the road for an hour and a half this morning, driving from their home on the Inishowen peninsula, to take their places on the coach today. In total, the round trip from Greencastle to Galway is more than 600km.

It seems incredible, on such a tiny island, that cancer patients should have to travel such distances to receive treatment. McDevitt agrees. “Imagine a map of Ireland, ” he says. “Draw a line from Galway in the west to Dublin in the east. There are eight cancer centres of excellence below that line [Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Galway and four in Dublin] and zero above it.”

“Surely to God, we deserve one in the northwest? Even if it was in Sligo. Driving up and down to Galway from Donegal just doesn’t make sense.”

Those who defend the present system point out that centralising cancer services at eight high-grade treatment centres around the country has resulted in an improvement in survival rates. They argue that the northwest does not have a sufficient population base to justify locating a centre there and that it is a mere quirk of history and geography that has left Donegal out on a limb like this.

Obviously, McDevitt doesn’t see things that way. “We’re either citizens or we’re not,” he says. “It’s that simple”

At 7.30am, McDevitt’s creaky, 22-seater coach pulls out onto the N13 with a half dozen people on board. William from Greencastle tells me he has 37 radiotherapy sessions scheduled over eight weeks to treat his prostate cancer. Fortunately, he has secured Monday-Friday accommodation at Inis Aoibhinn, a free residential care centre run by the Cancer Care West charity on the grounds of UCHG.

Like almost everyone I speak to today, he bemoans the lack of radiation oncology services in the northwest. But he cannot speak highly enough of the treatment he is receiving in Galway. He has his own room, a shower and tea-making facilities. His wife Margaret is welcome to stay and there’s always something on in the evenings.

At Kilross, there’s a parked car waiting for us on the roadside. A mother and daughter say their goodbyes. A few minutes later we reach our second pick-up point outside Ballybofay, where two more parked cars are waiting. McDevitt greets everyone warmly, welcomes them aboard and reminds us again to keep our seatbelts fastened. But what’s most notable is how effectively he manages to keep things moving.

The passengers are mostly older people. Some are travelling on the bus for the first time. They have loved ones to see off and baggage to stow. But delays are kept to a minimum. Everything proceeds with military precision.

When the Minister for Health cut subsidised bus services for Donegal cancer patients last year, he suggested public transport as a viable alternative. But the scheduled Bus Éireann service from Letterkenny to Galway takes five hours. Some cancer patients are obliged to drink three litres of water before receiving radiation treatment, meaning they would have to be nappied to make the journey without toilet stops.

The toilet issue won’t be as big a problem on the outbound journey today, McDevitt explains. But returning to Letterkenny after treatment on Friday morning, the bus will have to pull over nine or 10 times before it even reaches Tuam. “There are only two filling stations on that stretch of road. So most of the time passengers will have to go behind a well-sheltered tree, or a hedge on the side of the road. But at least we can facilitate that.”

Why not purchase a bus with a toilet onboard? He cites a lack of resources. “We’re a very small charity,” he says. “We don’t get a cent from the HSE or the Irish Cancer Charity. It’s a 24/7 battle for us even to exist.”

I look out the window and imagine how I would feel if one of my family had to endure these sorts of indignities. To our left, an icy Lough Mourne glistens in the early morning sunshine.

At eight o’clock, the bus whistles through the Barnesmore Gap into south Donegal. On the radio, EU economics and monetary commissioner Olli Rehn tells Morning Ireland that ¤1 billion in savings the country made from the recent promissory note deal should not be regarded as a “windfall gain” for our economy.

There are a couple of snorts of derision down the back. Yes, we’re really livin’ la vida loca here, Olli. But all things considered, the mood on the bus is remarkably upbeat. “What drugs are you taking?” one man innocently asks his neighbour. “Oh, heroin most evenings,” the friend replies, matter-of-factly. “Marijuana first thing in the morning.”

The friend casts a furtive glance sideways, to see if the journalist onboard is listening. Then the pair giggle amongst themselves.

Anne from Ballybofay is four weeks into a six-week programme of treatment for breast cancer. She says she loves Galway. She loves Inis Aoibhinn. She enjoys the massages on offer, the reflexology and nightly card games. Country singer John McNicholl and his band came to perform for them last week, she tells me. Even Daniel O’Donnell has been known to drop by occasionally.

“It’s like a four-star hotel,” she says. “A home from home. I’ll actually miss it when I leave.”
Up front, the male passengers are giving Eamon McDevitt some flack for his reluctance to overtake a slow-moving cattle trailer ahead. The final insult comes when both vehicles are overtaken by a truck carrying a mobile home on its trailer. This provokes a debate about overtaking in general, and whether or not it is illegal to overtake a school bus in the US.

By 8.45am, the frost has cleared. The radio is pumping out a solid diet of country n’ Irish and we’re enjoying glorious views of the sea at Mullaghmore. Having collected more passengers in Donegal town, Ballyshannon and Bundoran, we stop for our first toilet break at a Texaco station near the foot of Ben Bulben, in Grange, Co Sligo.

I get talking to Frank and Margaret from Donegal town. Frank is a retired engineer, Margaret a retired nurse. This is Frank’s second week of treatment for prostate cancer. Last week they stayed in a hotel and it was quite lonely. The radiation treatment itself only takes about 15 minutes. So they were left with 23 hours of the day to fill.

This week, they’ve gotten a place in Inis Aoibhinn. Margaret admits she hadn’t known Galway at all before this, but has come to love the city. “The shops, you mean,” smiles Frank. They’ve both been for long walks on the seafront at Salthill. Did they kick the wall at the end of the promenade, I ask? No, admits Margaret. They only recently learned about that Galway tradition. “So we’ll owe the wall a few kicks the next time we’re there,” she says.

Shortly after 9am, the bus rattles through Sligo town and hits the west of Ireland’s answer to Route 66, the N17. In a literal, figurative and spiritual sense, now we’re suckin’ diesel!

The far side of Collooney, we encounter that truck carrying a mobile home on its back again. Alas, our friend has flown too close to the sun this morning. He is broken down on the hard shoulder. I give him a condescending salute as we overtake. A sign says “Galway 128km”. Almost halfway there now.

By 9.45am, we’ve passed through Tubbercurry and Charlestown and now Knock airport is looming into view on the horizon. During our next toilet break, I’m approached by Donal from Bundoran. He wants me to know that, as a member of a political party he is too ashamed now to identify (I can guess), he once campaigned against the closure of breast cancer services in Sligo.

But such is his admiration for the standard of care in Galway, he says, that he has changed his mind on the issue. Amongst passengers from north Donegal, that’s not a popular opinion. Eamon McDevitt, for one, while recognising the excellent care patients receive in Galway, nonetheless insists that a facility of the same standard should exist in the northwest. He recalls a conversation he had with consultant oncologist (and now senator) Prof John Crown.

“Prof Crown is a man who calls a spade a spade. He told us that there is absolutely no need for four centres of excellence in Dublin. He said two would service the city adequately. Three would over-service it.”

(Contacted for this article, Prof Crown confirms the substance of those remarks but denies ever using the term “centres of excellence”. He considers the existing centres far from excellent. “The Sligo, Donegal, Leitrim region has a population of a quarter of a million people,” he says. “Which I consider more than adequate to support a cancer treatment facility. An American city of that size would probably have three cancer facilities.”)

After Tuam, the landscape changes dramatically. The soft and craggy boglands of the northwest give way to the flat green fields and neat stone walls of Co Galway. I ask McDevitt about the long heralded panacea to all of Donegal’s cancer woes, the proposed radiotherapy facility at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry.

Officially, the Government in Dublin is committed to providing ¤19 million for this £56 million (¤65 million) development and services are due to come online in 2016. But McDevitt is sceptical that the political will really exists on either side of the border to push the project to completion. “We were promised Altnagelvin in 2009. Then it was put back to 2010. Then we were guaranteed it would happen in 2012. Now we’re being told 2016 at the earliest.”

“As far as we’re concerned in Donegal, we’re not holding any faith in it.”

In the meantime, his Good and New Cancer Group charity continues to muddle along as best it can.“It costs about ¤1,000 a week to keep this service going. Right now, we have enough money in the kitty to keep us going another four and a half weeks.”

The group’s fundraising is mostly done by former patients. Frank and Margaret from Donegal town admit they’d never heard of the Good and New Cancer Group or Cancer Care West before Frank was diagnosed with prostate cancer. But now they’re determined, once he’s recovered, to help raise funds for both charities. “It’s very daunting to be diagnosed with cancer,” says Margaret. “But there’s great humanity in these services.”

We’re now crawling through Claregalway, on the home stretch. McDevitt shares a couple of anecdotes about the aftermath of the withdrawal of the subsidised door-to-door bus service to Dublin. One recovering Donegal cancer patient, aged 82, was called to Dublin for a follow-up visit. It was the first time he had made his way to the hospital on public transport.

By the time he arrived at Busáras, he had become confused and could no longer recall his own name nor what he was doing in Dublin. It was left to a good Samaritan, who happened to be passing, to search his pockets, find the letter containing details of his appointment and get in touch with the hospital. A taxi driver brought the man to the hospital and waited with him until he was admitted.

Another elderly man was returning to Donegal from Dublin, when he got out for a short break at Monaghan bus station. After using the bathroom, he returned to the number 36 bus and boarded it. Unfortunately, he had boarded the wrong bus and ended up back in Dublin again. “He was too afraid ever to get off the bus in Monaghan again.”

At 11.15am, we cross the Quincentennial Bridge in Galway and 10 minutes later we’re pulling up in the grounds of University College Hospital. We’ve made it in just under four hours, an hour faster than CIE. The following evening, I speak to McDevitt on the phone. It took five months of persuasion before I was allowed to travel with him and, even now, he still seems a little apprehensive about what I will write.

He tells me how his own wife got breast cancer in 1996, when she was just 36 year old. Their youngest child was six weeks old at the time. She received chemotherapy and has since made a full recovery. That was the beginning of his involvement in cancer fundraising. He mentions AXA Insurance in Letterkenny, who have insured the charity’s nine-seater bus free of charge, and begs that I mention them in my article.

“I just want them to know how grateful we are and how much we appreciate it.”

But he his modest about his own contribution. “In the long, lonely journey of cancer,” he says. “Having a service like this up and running helps ease the burden for these people and takes another worry off their shoulders at a vulnerable time. Because as we always say, if you live in Donegal and you’re diagnosed with cancer, you either travel or you die.”

Donations can be made to the Good and New Cancer charity at tel: 074 9113437

As a male not wishing to offend, I know I’m on dangerous ground here. In 1990s blockbuster movie terms, this isn’t Tom Hanks going behind enemy lines in Saving Private Ryan. This is Bruce Willis crash landing on that meteor in Armageddon. I’m on a suicide mission and I know it. So I’m going to pivot and ask a broader question. When does a young person, regardless of their gender, become an adult? I happen to be sipping coffee on my former university campus at the time of writing, killing time while waiting for a train. The students at the next table look to be in their late teens or early twenties.

By just about any of the criteria listed above (Neil Diamond excepted) these people can consider themselves of age. Yet ear-wigging on their conversation, it’s obvious that they’re not quite adults. Just listen to the way they speak. In the short time I’ve been here, they’ve discussed having the best night EVER, the most amazing croissants EVER and the evilest housemate EVER.

(Bear with me a moment, I’m going somewhere with this…)

That use of language doesn’t just reflect that age group’s inarticulateness, or propensity for hyperbole. Rather it reveals their lack of an adult frame of reference. For Rudyard Kipling, being an adult meant having the ability to meet triumph and disaster “and treat those two imposters just the same”.

Yet how can anyone do that if they haven’t previously experienced triumph or disaster? If they haven’t known better or worse nights? If they don’t know that superior and inferior croissants will almost certainly come their way in the future? And if they have not yet learned, from experience, that sharing accommodation with strangers always ends up in disaster?

Being an adult, then, isn’t just about having the legal right to buy alcohol, have sex and drive cars. Although those things are all highly recommended. Neither is it about looking pretty or being physically strong. In Hamlet, Shakespeare pays tribute to mankind thus: “In form and movement how express and admirable… In anticipation how like a god.”

It is in their ability to anticipate, to evaluate risks and rewards in advance, and act upon that information, that adults mark themselves out from children, and humankind demarcates itself from lesser species. Being an adult is about learning to make decisions for oneself, irrespective of group pressure. It’s about being financially independent and emotionally astute.

It’s about weighing the consequences of doing something more heavily than how it might feels to do that thing, even in the heat of the moment. Ultimately, being an adult is about accepting the burden of responsibility for oneself and, eventually, for others.

And if you’re a woman, it might also mean learning to appreciate that your opinions, achievements and ambitions are of infinitely greater significance than your outfit, hair style or relationship status. (Or maybe not. Maybe you’ve worked these things out long ago. Maybe you never thought them in the first place. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Either way, please, please, don’t hurt me!)

For the record, adults don’t arrive at this state of maturity because they are better, more selfless or more high minded than younger people. They behave this way because bitter life experience has shunted them to a place where to do otherwise would be as absurd. Like believing in Santa Claus. Or being afraid of the dark. Or quoting Neil Diamond lyrics in an article aimed at 18-35 year olds.

Oh well. For some, it’s all still ahead of us.

[Written for International Women's Day and, also, because I was broke and they asked me.]

That’s the conventional wisdom. And as I sit here luxuriating in the one-bedroom glorified garden shed I purchased for €575,000 in 2007, I know that the conventional wisdom is never, ever wrong. But wait, all is not lost. There are still have five days, and five hairbrained schemes, left with which to redeem ourselves. So put on your glad rags, folks, we’re taking the heifer to the mart!

1. Online dating.
The secret to online dating is telling lies. (No offence, but if the real you was a marketable commodity, we wouldn’t be in this fix.) The only snag is that, online, people expect you to lie. So if you’re 27, and you want them to think you’re 22, there’s no point saying you’re 22. Say you’re 15!

Oh, and you’d better pretend to have a good job too. So put that you’re a doctor. That’s right, a 15-year-old doctor. Doogie Howser is lookin’ for love!

2. Wear red.
A recent study in the European Journal of Social Psychology found that men are more likely to find a woman attractive if she’s wearing red. They’re also more likely to sit next to her, strike up a conversation and – if he’s Chris De Burgh – write an appalling song about her. (Of course, if you really want to turn heads, you should buy one of those high vis jackets. Sexy and safety conscious!)

3. Breadsticks.
According to every women’s magazine on earth, wearing revealing clothes is another sure fire way to “snare” a man. (On behalf of men, please don’t snare us. It’s illegal.) The theory goes that, if a man sees your exposed shoulder, or midriff, or thigh, he will immediately start to picture the rest of you naked. And shortly thereafter, picture himself having sex with you.

Unfortunately, this approach is problematic for two reasons. First, it’s February. (Cold and flu season, hello?) But, also, because you don’t want him to picture having sex. You want him to picture going on a date with you.

To that end, I suggest that you (1) commandeer a table in his office canteen or college cafeteria, (2) put down a nice table cloth, (3) light a couple of candles, (4) sit there eating breadsticks and making polite conversation while he walks past. It’s all about planting seeds, folks.

4. Learn Portuguese.
I got this idea from Love Actually: a film I profess to hate, but whose plotlines I am curiously au fait with. It may be a long shot. But by any chance, did you used to have a Portuguese housekeeper with whom you were secretly in love? And was the relationship thwarted because she didn’t speak English?

If so, learn Portuguese, fly out to Portugal and propose marriage to her in front of her entire village. Now that you’re engaged, and can communicate freely, she can finally tell you all how much she loves the music of Nickelback, and how she is convinced 9/11 was an inside job. And you’ll belatedly realise that she’s an annoying idiot and you two have nothing in common. Mazel tov!

5. Fake girlfriend
Okay, final throw of the dice here. FakeInternetGirlfriend.com is a real website and, they are at pains to stress, not an escort agency. Interaction with your fake girlfriend will only be online. So basically, the next time you post a Facebook photo of you and your weird cousin Alan playing Subbuteo, or camping out to be first in line for the next Star Wars film, a woman resembling Scarlett Johansson will reply saying “OMG u r so sexy!! When r u coming over 4 sex??”

And when your friends wonder how come they’ve never actually met Scarlett, you simply explain that its because she works undercover for the government and cannot risk blowing her cover. As a wise man once said, I love it when a plan comes together!

But I’ll be honest. I’m not sure men have twelve secrets. I’m not even sure we have one. Also, there are about 3.5 billion men. But I only know about a couple dozen of them very well. So it’s hard to make generalisations. I could say that men are so terrified of running into women at the checkout, when we’re buying toilet roll, that we sometimes buy kitchen roll instead. But that would be an embarrassing secret about me, rather than an embarrassing secret about anyone else.

With those caveats declared up front, permit me to present the 12 (Sort-of) Secrets Women May (or May Not) Already Know About Men…

1. Men are more concerned with our appearances than you would think. By which I mean, we are more concerned with our appearances than you would guess by looking at us.

2. We talk to each other about football because we love football. Well, most of the time. Other times its just something to talk about. Football is like the weather for men.

3. It really doesn’t matter if a toilet seat is up or down. I’m sorry, it doesn’t. The only reason we don’t fight our corner on this point is because it’s just too ridiculous an argument ever to get into. Even for a man.

4. Ninety percent of the crap women buy is to impress other women. No man has ever turned to his mate in a bar and said “Jesus, did you see the Christian Louboutin’s on yer one?”

5. Men don’t like asking for directions because the vast majority of people are idiots who couldn’t offer coherent directions from their own kitchen to the nearest bathroom if they were asked. And we don’t enjoy having to nod politely to these people.

6. No matter how superficial you think men are, I would say we’re more superficial than that again. Personally, I would date one of Youth Defence if she was good looking.

7. In fact, I would join Youth Defence if I thought it would sweeten the deal. (You know, I bet half the guys in the Iona Institute don’t even care about Catholic values. They’re all just convinced they have a shot with that Dr Maria Steen one.)

8. For men, a relationship is basically a gravy train of sex. So once we’re in one, we tend to be pretty malleable about most other things. But you can only push a man so far. I once broke up with a girl for making me go on the Dublin ghost bus tour.

9. When a man is in a relationship, he doesn’t discuss his sex life with his friends. I’m not sure why, he just doesn’t.

10. If a man doesn’t have a place he can go to, where his partner isn’t looking over his shoulder all the time – or if he feels he life is moving in a direction he isn’t entirely comfortable with and without his consent – he will begin to feel emasculated and resentful. Unfortunately, as he is too much of an idiot to articulate these feelings in a reasonable manner, he will communicate his unhappiness to you by acting like a dickhead 99% of the time.

11. Every man secretly thinks he’s the best in the world at something. Be kind, don’t burst our bubble.

12. Finally, don’t EVER look at our internet browsing history. Ever. Not even if you think there’s a chance it could avert a nuclear holocaust. Just trust me on this one.

Freddie Mercury would be 66 if he were alive today. Quite how many stadiums Queen would have packed out in the past couple of decades, had the band’s outrageously talented frontman not died in 1991, is a matter for conjecture. But there is no doubt that their music remains an enormous box office draw. In 2002, Ben Elton’s We Will Rock You – a musical based on 24 of Queen’s greatest hits – opened in London’s Dominion Theatre to some of the most savage reviews in West End history.

The Guardian called it “sixth form”. The Telegraph: “prolefeed at its worst”. Even the BBC, for whom Elton had penned such classic sitcoms as The Young Ones and Blackadder, dismissed his latest venture as “not just arrogant, but downright foolhardy”. Yet the musical has proven an enormous hit, seen by 15 million people in 17 countries.

Relaxing in the bowels of the Dominion Theatre, with another sold out performance booming through the walls, it is obvious those early reviews still rankle the show’s creator.

“If I sound a little defensive,” Ben Elton begins (and he does), “it’s because the notion that critics are able to set aside their own egos, their own petty resentments and preconceptions, and offer [an objective] judgment; is clearly insane.” Surely he feels vindicated by the show’s success? “There’s nothing to vindicate,” he snarls. “If half a dozen critics hated their night, they hated their night. What I object to is the idea that the night was hateful. No, it was only hateful to them.”

Personal invective against Elton aside (once a leading light of alternative comedy, he is now reviled as a sellout by many in the British press), it is hard to fault the substance of the early criticism against the show.

Elton rejected a plan by Mercury’s manager Jim Beach to base a musical on the singer’s life. (“A musical about Freddie dying of Aids,” he tells me, “was always going to be a musical about Freddie dying of Aids.”)

Instead he concocted a futuristic saga about two rock’n’roll freedom fighters, Galileo and Scaramouche, who do battle with the evil Globalsoft Corporation and its flamboyant leader, the Killer Queen. The kindest thing one could say about the plot is that there is precious little of it. Elton shuffles through a hefty chunk of Queen’s back catalogue with remarkable economy. But what a back catalogue that is. One thing the show’s detractors may have overlooked is the irresistibly broad appeal of Queen’s music. Even if you’ve never owned a Queen album in your life (and I haven’t), there’s scarcely a song in We Will Rock You that you won’t find yourself singing along to.

It is the songs that shift the tickets at the box office, the songs that flog the glow sticks in the lobby, and the songs that have audiences on their feet, night after night. (Consider, by contrast, what thin gruel Jennifer Saunders had to work with on Viva Forever: The Spice Girls musical over at the Piccadilly Theatre. Can anyone even hum the title track?)

One of the more remarkable facts about Queen, I venture, is that all four members wrote number one singles for the band. Elton nods eagerly.

“I’m something of an evangelist for that statistic,” he admits. “Because one of the questions people often ask me is ‘Would Freddie have approved [of the musical]?’ As if Freddie was somehow separate to Queen! As if Freddie was the special one and the other three were sidemen!”

I had been searching for a less contentious subject of conversation. But those appear to be thin on the ground. “The insane arrogance,” he continues, “that these people would seek to take the voice of a dead man, and know it better than the men he chose to share his entire professional life with” – the surviving members of the band are producers on the show – “seems to me a conceit that is within the gift only of journalists.”

While (hopefully) unwarranted in this particular instance, Elton’s antipathy toward the media in general is certainly understandable. His press clippings from the past decade are spectacularly hostile. Once the self-righteous scourge of Thatcherism, he alienated many former fans, firstly, by writing a musical with arch-Tory Andrew Lloyd Webber and later, perhaps irrevocably, by contributing a song performed at the inauguration of George W Bush.

“It was a song about the triumph of love over the corrupting power of bigotry,” he snaps. “I was very proud for it to be performed. I think it was probably more important for it to be played at an event like that than at a meeting of Pacifists Anonymous.”

His fellow comics have been equally scathing. In a famous routine at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005, comedian Stewart Lee compared Elton unfavourably to Osama Bin Laden. The latter, Lee concluded, “has at least lived his life according to a consistent set of ethical principles.” (When I mention this, Elton claims never to have heard of Stewart Lee.)

Is Elton ever surprised by the vitriol directed at him? After all, no one is really obliged to remain exactly as they were at 25 for the rest of their life. “I think I have stayed the same,” he insists. “My politics are the same. I wasn’t what people thought was then [in the 1980s], and I’m not who they think I am now.”

I glance down at the scribbled list of questions in my hand. I had hoped to discuss Blackadder, his love of Morecambe and Wise and whether he was really offered a deal to write Police Academy 6. But right now, just about any of those questions seems liable to elicit an irritated response. Instead, we talk about Australia (where he currently lives), his passion for paddleboarding (which he likens to piloting a gondola), and the internet (of which he seems preternaturally suspicious).

One joke that survives from the original production of We Will Rock You requires the audience not to know the difference between a URL and an email address. Another more recent addition is predicated on the notion that Twitter is a forum solely for telling people what you’ve eaten for breakfast.

Is the comedian, and bestselling author, something of a luddite? He denies it. What he does resent, he concedes, is the internet’s capacity for spreading and legitimising misinformation. “My wife is a bass player,” he explains. “But because she played saxophone on one song, the Sun called her ‘Saxy Sophie’. Now she is forever a saxophonist in the annals of the internet.”

At 51, the man who wrote The Young Ones is beginning to sound like a bit of an old curmudgeon. But I don’t dare say as much. Instead, I ask him about Simon Cowell, whom he admits to knowing slightly. “He’s exactly what you see on television. A very pleasant, gently amoral man who it’s fun to be around.”

When We Will Rock You opened in 2002, its plot traced the death of real music back in time to the popularity of the Pop Idol TV show and the manufactured band Hear’Say.

Those jokes have since been replaced by jibes at the expense of Cowell and the X Factor. But it seems to me that Elton’s show has quite a lot in common with the reality talent contests to which it claims to be an antidote.

“Oh does it?” he growls. It’s hard to tell if he is outraged, mock outraged or just plain tired.

Fresh-faced singers, familiar songs, bums on seats, fun for all the family. It’s not a hundred miles away, is it? “Our show is not without its contradictions,” he concedes. “But it’s honest. It delivers what it promises: live music, organically performed, with some good gags thrown in. That’s its triumph. That’s why its on the side of the angels.”

As we say our goodbyes, he returns to a question I never asked him. The one about whether or not he deserved to be considered a sellout. “I could probably afford never to work again if I wanted to. Probably. But I could also be 10 times richer if I’d accepted all of the opportunities that came my way.”

Might those have included an offer to write Police Academy 6? “Yes, as it happens,” he replies. And for the first time in our 30 minutes together, he actually flashes me a smile.

After the show, the press contingent are ushered into a side room for an appropriately regal audience with Queen drummer Roger Taylor. In celebration of the 10th (actually, the 11th) anniversary of We Will Rock You, the show is embarking upon a world tour that incorporates dates in the O2 Dublin this April and Belfast’s Odyssey Arena in June.

As he is ushered down the line of international press, it is clear that we will each be permitted one question only. So I decide to ask him the one question that has really been on my mind all evening. That is, whether all of this, the cast, the script, the whole production would be redundant if his old friend Freddie were still alive? Taylor is astonishingly suave and husky voiced, like an English Vito Corleone. He mulls the question for a second, and then replies.

“Perhaps,” he says. “Perhaps.” Then he saunters away.

Well, I’m not buying it.

I’m bald. They say bald men are more virile than other men. I doubt it. I say we’re more bald than other men. I mean, we might be more virile. It’s possible. But who knows? Who’s done the research? To ensure an unbiased population sample, she’d have to have slept with, like, a hundred bald men, and a hundred men with hair. And if you’re sleeping with that lady, there are bigger things you should be worried about than how she rates your performance.

Men worry about going bald. They should do. It happened to me. It’ll probably happen to you. Your hairline might already be receding in tiny increments. But here’s how you’ll know when the jig is really up.

It’s when the barber no longer takes out that mirror, to show you the back of your head, at the end of the haircut. (Or he takes it out, but he flashes past the back of your head like a Top Gun pilot buzzing the tower.)

The barber isn’t stupid. He knows you’re going to blame him for your bald spot. Damn right, you’re going to blame him for it. He’s the surgeon. He lost the patient.

So now you’re bald. What corrective action is there to be taken? None. Society deems it acceptable for naturally beautiful women to wear fake tan, high heels and eyelashes you could sweep the kitchen floor with. But if the poor, persecuted bald man dares to sport a toupee or a combover, he will be scorned and ridiculed wherever he goes.

And that’s where things stood from the dawn of time, pretty much, until August 19th 2012. That morning, The Daily Telegraph carried an article titled “Baldness cure could be one the shelves in two years.” A bald friend emailed it on to me. He was quite excited. This was The Daily Telegraph, he stressed. Not Weekly World News.

The article reported that Pennsylvania University has developed a lotion which “raises the possibility of not only stopping hair loss, but also of bald men also being able to regrow full heads of hair.” I read that last part about a dozen times. It was as though the sun had just peaked out from behind a cloud. In my head, I began to hear Paul Robeson singing Go Down Moses.

Sweet holy Jesus! This was deliverance!

Now as it happens, on August 19th 2012, I was invited to a lesbian wedding reception. And it’s funny. If you are a bald man, and you do ever find yourself brainstorming potential comeback haircuts, there aren’t many better places you could be than a lesbian wedding reception. What would I look like with a mullet, I wondered? Or a pompadour? Or a Mohawk?

For the first time in half a decade, I dared to dream!

Six months later, the trail has gone cold. The big talking Head of Dermatology at Pennsylvania University has made no further grand claims in the press. None of the other newspapers or periodicals I’ve scoured have carried updates on the story.

Have the bald community’s hopes been raised in vain? Probably, yes. Why do I say that? Because life isn’t fair. As a bald men, I already know that. So there you go. You’re probably going bald. It is an affliction with no silver lining. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Oh, and Happy New Year!

N.B. The day after this was published my uncle texted to say that he had avoided going bald by taking “special precautions”. When I asked what that meant, and he replied “There was a man in Raith [near Ballyhaunis] with the cure but unfortunately he died before you were born.” As I said, life’s a bitch.

Well, I’m not buying it.

I’m bald. They say bald men are more virile than other men. I doubt it. I say we’re more bald than other men. I mean, we might be more virile. It’s possible. But who knows? Who’s done the research? To ensure an unbiased population sample, she’d have to have slept with, like, a hundred bald men, and a hundred men with hair. And if you’re sleeping with that lady, there are bigger things you should be worried about than how she rates your performance.

Men worry about going bald. They should do. It happened to me. It’ll probably happen to you. Your hairline might already be receding in tiny increments. But here’s how you’ll know when the jig is really up.

It’s when the barber no longer takes out that mirror, to show you the back of your head, at the end of the haircut. (Or he takes it out, but he flashes past the back of your head like a Top Gun pilot buzzing the tower.)

The barber isn’t stupid. He knows you’re going to blame him for your bald spot. Damn right, you’re going to blame him for it. He’s the surgeon. He lost the patient.

So now you’re bald. What corrective action is there to be taken? None. Society deems it acceptable for naturally beautiful women to wear fake tan, high heels and eyelashes you could sweep the kitchen floor with. But if the poor, persecuted bald man dares to sport a toupee or a combover, he will be scorned and ridiculed wherever he goes.

And that’s where things stood from the dawn of time, pretty much, until August 19th 2012. That morning, The Daily Telegraph carried an article titled “Baldness cure could be one the shelves in two years.” A bald friend emailed it on to me. He was quite excited. This was The Daily Telegraph, he stressed. Not Weekly World News.

The article reported that Pennsylvania University has developed a lotion which “raises the possibility of not only stopping hair loss, but also of bald men also being able to regrow full heads of hair.” I read that last part about a dozen times. It was as though the sun had just peaked out from behind a cloud. In my head, I began to hear Paul Robeson singing Go Down Moses.

Sweet holy Jesus! This was deliverance!

Now as it happens, on August 19th 2012, I was invited to a lesbian wedding reception. And it’s funny. If you are a bald man, and you do ever find yourself brainstorming potential comeback haircuts, there aren’t many better places you could be than a lesbian wedding reception. What would I look like with a mullet, I wondered? Or a pompadour? Or a Mohawk?

For the first time in half a decade, I dared to dream!

Six months later, the trail has gone cold. The big talking Head of Dermatology at Pennsylvania University has made no further grand claims in the press. None of the other newspapers or periodicals I’ve scoured have carried updates on the story.

Have the bald community’s hopes been raised in vain? Probably, yes. Why do I say that? Because life isn’t fair. As a bald men, I already know that. So there you go. You’re probably going bald. It is an affliction with no silver lining. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Oh, and Happy New Year!

N.B. The day after this was published my uncle texted to say that he had avoided going bald by taking “special precautions”. When I asked what that meant, and he replied “There was a man in Raith [near Ballyhaunis] with the cure but unfortunately he died before you were born.” As I said, life’s a dick.

Ask someone who earns their living as a self-proclaimed expert on the subject, however, and you’ll get an altogether different, more marketable answer. The answer varies from self-proclaimed expert to self-proclaimed expert. But they inevitably involve (1) a hitherto undisclosed insight, (2) with a catchy title, and a formula that (3) happens to be exactly the right length for one of those crappy paperbacks you rashly purchase at the airport when you’re depressed at how unsuccessful your life is.

As someone perpetually at the airport, and depressed at how unsuccessful their life is, permit me to offer this beginner’s guide…

DALE CARNEGIE: HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE (1936)
“There is only one way to get anybody to do anything,” Dale Carnegie wrote in 1936. “That is by making them want to do it.” His book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, is probably the best known, certainly the most parodied but, alas, no longer the best-selling title of its kind.

Carnegie admitted to swiping some of his ideas from “Socrates, Jesus and Chesterfield”. (The cigarette company? The football team?) But with a focus on the improvement of oneself, as opposed to the manipulation of others, he had essentially invented the self-help genre as we know it.

RHONDA BYRNE: THE SECRET (2006)
The blockbuster self-help philosophy of the Naughties was a hastily assembled stew comprising three distinct ingredients. First, there is a dollop of common sense. (If you are positive and open to new experiences good things are more likely to happen to you.)

Second, is a generous helping of narcissistic self-indulgence. (You should focus exclusively on gratifying your own needs and desires, at the expense of the needs and desires of others around you.)

Finally, there is a truck load of horseshit so transparently bonkers even Tom Cruise would probably shake his head, chuckle quietly and walk away.

The latter is Byrne’s Law of Attraction, whereby if you envisage an unoccupied parking space, tiny frequency waves will radiate outward from your brain to ensure that said space will be vacant upon arrival at your destination.

(For the record, remarks such as “Jesus Christ, that is totally insane” are not considered the done thing in self-help circles. A more appropriate phrasing here would be “Hey, if it works for you, who cares that it’s totally insane?”)

SUSAN JEFFERS: FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY (1986)
Susan Jeffers, who died last month aged 74, had long mastered the art of the snappy book title. Over the course of her career, they included End The Struggle and Dance With Life, I Can Handle It! and (my personal favourite) I’m Okay, You’re a Brat!

But it is her first book that remains her best known. In it, Jeffers shares such startling insights as the fact that “90% of what we worry about never happens.” I’m guessing one of the fears she overcame in writing the book was ‘What if someone asks me how I possibly arrived at that figure?’

ANTHONY ROBBINS: UNLIMITED POWER (1987)
In Unlimited Power, Tony Robbins invites us to examine the careers of such business luminaries as Colonel Sanders (yes, the KFC guy) and ask ourselves what qualities Sanders had that we don’t have. Was it talent, he asks? Apparently not. Intelligence? Nope, not that either.

The difference, Robbins explains, is something called “personal power”, which the bauld Colonel apparently had in spades. Personally, I’d have said it was the white suit, string tie and the finger-lickin’ chicken recipe. But then, that’s just the sort of negative, cynical attitude that will one day see me die penniless in a skip.

JACK CANFIELD & MARK VICTOR HANSEN: CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL (1993)
Twenty years ago, two motivational speakers compiled 101 of the sort of sickly sweet, inspirational “true life” stories you might nowadays discreetly unfriend your mother for posting to Facebook. That book became a publishing phenomenon.

Today, Canfield and Hansen’s empire of feel good pablum now spans over 100 titles, including Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, Chicken Soup for the African-American Soul and Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul. (The latter of which may, or may not, be a self-help book aimed at automobiles.)

BRIAN TRACY: MAXIMUM ACHIEVEMENT (STRATEGIES AND SKILLS THAT WILL UNLOCK YOUR HIDDEN POWERS TO SUCCEED) (1993)
“At almost any time, you can measure how well you are doing in your relationship by one simple test: laughter. How much two people laugh together is the surest single measure of how well things are going.” By that yardstick, author Brian Tracy and I must be involved in one of the great romances of our age.

The guy is a firecracker of vague, muddled and/or incomprehensible gobbledygook masquerading as insight. Who knows, maybe it is my ability to follow coherent lines of thought that has been holding me back all these years.

DEEPAK CHOPRA: THE SEVEN SPIRITUAL LAWS OF SUCCESS (1994)
The Indian-born New Age guru is a spiritual leader for celebrity age. He specialises in repackaging Hindu concepts for the ecumenical, pseudoscience for the educated as well cultivating personal friendships with people too famous to really have friends (Mikhail Gorbachev, Michael Jackson, Richard Branson).

Time Magazine is less infatuated with the man, stating that Chopra’s teachings “create false hope in genuinely ill people and dissuade them from seeking medical care and guidance”. Bah! In the immortal words of Nigel Tufnel, that’s just nitpicking, init?

ECKHART TOLLE: THE POWER OF NOW (1997)
Oprah regards Eckhart Tolle as a prophet. She was turned on to his work by Meg Ryan, so you know that, intellectually, we’re in some pretty rarefied air here. The German-born purveyor of spiritual enlightenment is an advocate of living one’s life in the moment.

Which is just as well, because he tends to leave several lifetimes’ worth of pauses between each syllable when he appears on her show. His book is equally slow moving. I’ve read the first 40 pages and, so far, I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about.

ALAN CARR: THE EASY WAY TO STOP SMOKING (1985)
Among smokers, Alan Carr has long been regarded as the man who holds the keys to the non-smoking kingdom. His famous promise was that if you finished this book, you were guaranteed to quit smoking for good.

As someone who did successfully kick the habit, but failed abjectly to make it through 400+ pages of Alan Carr’s lumpen, repetitive prose, I would say that he was right up to a point.

If you have the willpower to finish the book then you no doubt have sufficient willpower to pack in smoking. (In much the same way that, if you can knock out a machine gun nest of bloodthirsty Chechen mercenaries, you can probably subdue a detachment of Girl Guides.) One does not, however, necessarily derive from the other.

M. SCOTT PECK: THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED (1978)
It is in his real world credentials that M. Scott Peck differs most from every other author in this genre. That late author was a Harvard graduate, a World War 2 veteran, a practicing psychiatrist and the director of a mental health clinic.

Which is to say, M. Scott Peck actually had some real world credentials. His most famous book advocates the patient application of discipline and hard work, rather than any particular quick fix, as the key to dealing with life’s most taxing problems.

The Road Less Travelled remains the one self-help book likely to be read by people who don’t normally read self-help books. Which is as close, on this page, as you’ll find to an endorsement.