Five Wonderful Wig-Wearers

From club nights to fancy dress parties, nothing changes the appearance as fast as a wig. Rumours of covert wig-wearing haunt many celebrities, including poor old Ernie Wise whose hair was, by all accounts, real, but we are interested in those who flaunt their wigs. If you’re going to wear one (and why not?), make it a statement.

“I Don’t Wanna Lose You” sang Tina Turner in 1989, but not to her hair. Tina’s wigs were simply part of the transformation from Anna Mae Bullock to the foot-stomping, leather corset sporting Tina Turner. She apparently even wears her wigs, which are handmade in Spain, when she’s on her own at home. You’re Addicted to Wigs, Tina.

Not only was the poor chap christened Marion, he wore a wig from 1948 onwards. But as befits someone nicknamed The Duke, he was very dignified about it. When questioned about his hairstyle by a prying journalist he said "It's not phony. It's real hair. Of course, it's not mine, but it's real."

Mollie Sugden’s lurid wigs in ‘Are you Being Served’ are as much a character as Mrs Slocombe. Her piled up beehive hairdo featured a startling array of shades, which matched, or sometimes clashed horribly with, her frilly shirts. Whenever celebrities decide to adopt brightly coloured hair (like Katy Perry and Kelly Osbourne last year) Mrs Slocombe’s name pops up again. Whether or not Mrs Slocombe dyed her…um…cat to match, we will never know.

Although receding hair gallops through the British Royal family like a corgi with alopecia, our present heir apparent has resisted the lure of the hair piece. Not so his ancestors. Elizabeth I wore red wigs to disguise her thinning hair and had more than eighty, including some blonde ones. The hair stylists working on the sticom Blackadder clearly had a lot of fun with this fact when they worked with Miranda Richardson (pictured). Charles II resisted a wig for many years as he boasted a sort of naturally curly mullet. When he succumbed to male pattern baldness, he began wearing wigs and was rumoured to have had one made from the pubic hair of his mistresses. Which we’re hoping he’d given a good rinse through first.

The Queen of Wigs, La Collins has worn one throughout her career, even when young, because she believed she had ‘bad hair’. She made no secret of her wigs, and has her own range of wigs now, including Alexis Carrington Colby’s immaculate, curled crop. The sneer and the cut-glass diction are not for sale, sadly.