Cutting Edge: How mo can you go?

Put it down to decades of habit, but it all started rather badly. I found myself playing catch up after I forgot to cease shaving until November 3.

But, once I had put aside the razor, the moustache began to emerge and I joined the "Movember" clan bristle by bristle.

I registered on the Movember website and made a donation to the cause of prostate cancer and began to exchange knowing looks with the surprisingly large number of people on the same adventure.

Over the next month, I would discover the hidden power and meaning of the moustache.

The first thing that I noticed was that the moustache had a mind of its own. Ignoring the DNA, which produces dark hair with the occasional grey interloper, the mo emerged from hiding in deep rusty red with smatterings of grey.

The second thing I noticed was that everyone noticed. No encounter, greeting or chance meeting could take place without first honouring the moustache. It started at home where my wife, Sylvia, adopted an odd look somewhere between a smile and contempt. For the month, she began every day with the question: "When are you going to shave that ghastly/god-awful/ugly thing off?" My daughter would immediately intervene on the side of the moustache, saying: "Don't shave it off!" Then we would have breakfast, the moustache quietly gloating at the attention.

I was surprised by the emotional investment shown by people who had hitherto never talked to me about anything other than the weather . "Oh my God! Shave it off," said some, their hands on their cheeks and their eyes wide with horror. Others shook their heads and commiserated as if I were suffering from a rare skin disease. There were a few who took a liking to it, sidling up to me to whisper huskily: "I like it, it's very manly."

I began to entertain fantasies about growing it into one of the legendary styles such as the Fu Manchu, which droops down the sides of the mouth to wiry points which extend beyond the chin, or the Dali, with its sharp ends pointed up in a ridiculous mock smile.

Perhaps I could even aim to emulate that most impressive of all moustache growers, the 19th-century Bulgarian revolutionary, Panayot Hitov. His mo grew 20cm beyond his cheeks to resemble the wings of a soaring eagle. A permanently furrowed brow, a waistcoat and a bow tie completed the look.

But the problem was the interregnum, when the moustache was still in its early tentative phase. I was confronted by a stark choice as a weekend away with African and Latin American leaders at a game reserve loomed. Members of the media always enter such meetings with a deficit of profundity. To arrive with a half-baked moustache would surely court further humiliation. I decided to keep the mo and, to my surprise, it went largely unremarked. Perhaps years of diplomacy make former heads of state immune to eccentric facial hair.

Then, with just three days to go, I faced another crisis - a television appearance for which the host had pleaded with me to shave it off "because you will scare the living daylights out of the viewers".

I had started three days late so there was karma in shaving it off three days early. As the moustache disappeared down the plug hole, I did a double-take. My old shaven friend was staring back at me from the mirror, a look of sadness in his eyes.

Hartley is editor-at-large