The thing with hair is you'll miss it when it has gone. At the moment Larry David, the co-creator of Seinfeld went up to collect his Emmy for writing the episode, The Contest, his first words were: “Well this is all well and good, but I'm still bald.”

Maybe that fear was the problem for Steve McClaren, the former England head coach, too. Standing in the pouring rain at Wembley with an umbrella over his head as his team lost, like some soppy old boy on the touchline at a parks game. The wally with the brolly. He'll never live that down. He said he was trying to keep his notes dry, but what was he going to write anyway? Football isn't a long game. If you can't remember what has happened during the last 45 minutes you haven't got the mind for the job in the first place. (Frankly, if you can't remember what happened less than an hour ago you might want to start looking up Alzheimer's on the internet before it is too late and you start putting the cat in the microwave and the kettle outside for the night, but that is beside the point.)

No, it could be argued that the reason McClaren was so desperate for shelter was the dreaded combination of a thinning pate and a torrential downpour. I've got friends in his position and they say the same. They would have made the umbrella a priority, too.

Another football manager, Roy Keane of Sunderland, said a funny thing the other day. He was talking about the type of players he might be buying in the summer and he said: “Not people with fancy names or someone with long hair.” Now, fancy names, I understand. There used to be a cricketer called the Honourable Timothy Lamb, who was the second son of the second Baron of Rochester, and bowled for Middlesex, and there is no way they would stand for someone like that up in Sunderland. The same with anyone who insisted on being called Esquire, or a bloke with a title, like Count. Sure, there would be fun on the terraces for a little while, but there is a lot that could go wrong if you signed a Count and, as a West Ham United supporter, I should know. We've had a right few at our place over the years.

No, it was Keane's aversion to long hair that drew me. Strange, isn't it? We think we have evolved as a society, all first name terms with the boss, casual Fridays and open-necked shirts, but the moment your hair touches your collar we revert to prewar type. We haven't moved on from the disapproving, long-haired layabout, randy Scouse git mindset, really. Brian Clough, who in football was painted as a progressive and radical thinker, still used to demand his players had a short back and sides and little has changed. We think it reactionary to argue about religion, then get snooty over a fringe.

The schools are the worst. In business, I can almost understand it. At work, you might be confronted by a person from a different generation, or a different culture, and it is important to maintain an appearance that will not make them uncomfortable. Nose-rings and cross- dressing are out for the same reasons. But schools? Institutions of learning, expression, free thought, with the capacity to change the outlook of future generations: no wonder this place is in a mess if the first thing we do is batter the individuality out of every citizen at the age of 12.

Number one son is currently being mithered by his teachers about getting a haircut, which, in the modern age, is just bizarre. You read the material on these school websites or pick up a glossy prospectus or mission statement and it is wall-to-wall buzzwords about freedom and nurturing the individual: “vibrant... exciting... opportunities... enthusiasm”. Boot camp is not mentioned. There might be some blather about traditional values thrown in for those that like mathematics learned parrot fashion, but no one lets on that a school aspires to row after row of uniform adolescents, looking the same. My idea of traditional values is to turn out kids that can read, write, spell and think for themselves, not to have them properly kitted out and groomed in appearance and mind for a career with the Royal Air Force. Regulation haircuts produce regulation thinkers, and we've got enough of those, thanks. That is why we are where we are.

Meanwhile, entirely acceptable in modern Britain: shaved heads. All the rage, in fact. Keane had one when he was captain of Manchester United, and didn't he cut a fine figure in that period, chasing down referees, bellowing fury in their faces, surrounded by team-mates, all stubble and bulging veins. Yet Keane the manager did not say he would not sign a player who looked like he had popped over from a National Front rally around 1977. He was against long hair. So I'm out of step again, because when I see a guy with a close-cropped skull, I don't actually think neat, tidy, gay or high fashion. I think: Belsen.

I think that when the Nazis wished to dehumanise people on arrival at concentration camps, a first tactic was to shave their heads. I think that when the Army wishes to condition people into compliance, into receiving orders without question, it first strips them of individuality by making them look the same. And maybe that is necessary in the Armed Forces, when forming a discussion group is not the best tactic under fire, but in a school? A place of thought and improvement? Really?

Hey, what does appearance matter? It is what is inside your head that counts. Lennon would still have been Lennon, however many trips to the barbers he made. Yet if we are juvenile enough to be challenged by a fringe, how do we ever develop what lies behind it? If you look at those league tables about health, and education and living standards and all of the problems it may require some original thought to conquer, we are in pretty much the same position as Sunderland in the Premier League. And no coincidence that, surely.

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