The talk of the town last night was not Marleene Klass's cleavage, nor the sense of deja vu when Cate Blanchett emerged wearing the same dress she wore to the Oscars this year, but instead the small matter of a fringe.

Tom Cruise's to be exact.

Let's not forget that the smallest man in Hollywood has just spent the last few months pretending to be a Nazi general in Valkyrie. Angular haircuts are de rigeur for anyone under the influence of Hitler - were Cruise to slick the fringe to one side and go to work on his top lip with a marker pen, well you know what the result would be.

But to me there's something else going on in the Primary School, my-mum-has-let-me-grow-my-fringe look. Cruise is ageing.

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And what's the best way to disguise that? Look like a boy.

Revert back to the teenage pant-wearing, air-guitar playing Risky Business look. Or even better, like your own small child. For is there not something eerily reminiscent in the follicular fads of all the Cruise family?

Put a finger over the faces of Suri, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise and the haircuts are interchangeable. Could there be a stronger message of unity? No, and Cruise knows it.

THE FOUNTAIN OF ETERNAL YOUTH

Peter Stringfellow

The more he ages the more the girlfriends get younger, the tan darker and the thongs smaller.

The Bride of Wildenstein

Otherwise known as the woman most touched by the harsh end of the plastic surgery knife, the poor thing may never again be able to express confusion, unhappiness, anger or joy again thanks to a face that just won’t move.

Britney Spears

She has a glittering career, an annulled marriage, a real marriage and two kids by the time she is 25. Then she realises she has kissed her youth goodbye, heads out at night without any knickers, shaves off her hair, loses custody of the children and clutches a lap dog for security while driving a car. Without a license. Drastic, but effective.

Karl Lagerfeld

Loses twenty pounds, hides behind dark glasses, surrounds himself with young, beautiful (and did I say young?) women and resorts to dressing like a vampire; there's nothing more youthful than immortality. The man's a genius.

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