Brilliant new club nights and shows for 2012!

At last my gorgeous toyboy can run his fingers through MY hair

GAIL ON FINDING LOVE AND HER HAIR GROWING BACK

By Dennis Ellam

Gail Porter says new boyfriend Jonny Davies is so gorgeous that she loves running her fingers through his mane of rock-star hair.

What's more amazing - five years after she lost her hair to alopecia - is that he can now run his fingers through hers too.

Six months ago, just as suddenly as it fell out, it started to grow back and the former lads' mag favourite now has a thick, neatlyshaped elfin crop.

"Is it all down to happiness?" she says. "It must be, because right now I'm happier than I've been for a long time, so much is going right for me. And the big difference in my life is Jonny. He's as amazed as I am to see what's happening. We woke up the other morning and he said, 'hey look at you babe, you have bed hair!'.

"It's true, it was sticking out all over the place.

We just had to rush and get the camera to do a photo. Jonny is convinced it's all because of the effect he's had on me.

"I told him he should go into business as a professional hair-restorer. As long as he doesn't start dating the clients, that is."

She admits that meeting Jonny was as unorthodox as anything she's done. They had been speaking on Facebook for months before they met.

He is lead guitarist with indie band New Vinyl, based in Yorkshire, and he was looking for help to make contacts in London. Finally, she invited him to call round, while the group were visiting radio studios.

Gail says: "I opened the door and right away I thought, 'ooh! This guy's so cute!'. He looked so good, although he was a bit shy, he found it hard to make eye contact, and he had a wonderful sense of humour. It didn't take long before we found we could chat easily and have a laugh, just like good mates.

"We loved going to restaurants, the cinema, even just taking boat trips on the Thames. I introduced him to sushi and he introduced me to Yorkshire pudding."

There was just the little matter of a 15-year age gap. Gail has just celebrated her 39th birthday, and Jonny is 24.

But she says: "It makes no difference. Either I'm immature or he's very mature. Whichever, we are kindred spirits. He did remind me that next year I'm 40 and I said okay, then it won't be long before you're chasing me around on my zimmer frame.

"Hey, we're in the time of the cougars, don't forget. That's older women dating younger men. There was a spark between us at the start and, no, it definitely hasn't faded yet. It didn't matter in the least to Jonny that I was bald, he just thought it was cool.

"He was more interested in the tattoos on my arms - I had them done in Thailand five years ago. Right away, he recognised the design on my left arm. It was a Koi carp - like his family kept in the pond back home in Yorkshire!" When she was struck by alopecia, Gail's doctors told her they were 99 per cent certain that her hair would never come back. In less than a month, she lost her long, luxurious blonde tresses, her eyebrows and lashes and all of her body hair, even the tiny hairs inside her nostrils.

She had always been stunningly beautiful. Now she was defiantly bald, as well. She refused to wear a wig, or cover up with fancy headwear, and instead stood up to say that being sexy didn't have to depend purely on looks.

"Hair or no hair, it doesn't matter any more," Gail says. "But sure, this is a special surprise I never bargained for. I was so thrilled when it began to appear I started experimenting with different colours.

"It was growing back jet black, so I've sprayed it silver and gold and blue, and a week ago I coloured it blonde, although it's growing so quickly now that the roots are already starting to show. It's still such a shock. I had become quite accustomed to my slaphead!

"Now I keep catching sight of myself in shop windows and thinking for half a second, 'hey! Who's that blonde chick?'. We knew things were beginning to happen when Jonny noticed hairs were growing again on my legs.

"He counted four - then, no, there were five. What a triumph! Soon I had to start shaving them for the first time in years, and even that doesn't seem like a chore any more."

It was 1999 when Gail really grabbed the public's attention. A nude picture of her, 100ft high, was projected on to the Houses of Parliament as a marketing stunt. She still laughs at the furore.

Advertisement - article continues below »
Would she consider a repeat appearance, to liven up the General Election campaign? No chance, she says - not least because her daughter Honey, now seven, is reaching an age when she's feeling hugely embarrassed by her mummy's past profile. The picture was iconic. A symbol of physical perfection. Yet all the while, in Gail's private life, there was turmoil. She had selfharmed as a teenager and struggled with anorexia for nine years. Her marriage to musician Dan Hipgrave broke down and it was during the stress of their divorce that she developed alopecia, her familiar blonde hair falling out in clumps.

After the split, she had a boyfriend, James Lloyd - a cameraman she met while making the TV show Dead Famous. He was at her side for four years, constantly supporting her, reassuring her she was still beautiful.

But last summer the relationship ended painfully. She says: "I discovered James was cheating on me. I used to joke about my insecurities, I used to tell him I would be jealous if I caught him talking to women with hair.

"I've no idea who the other woman was, I don't know what she looks like, I don't even know her name. But I began to suspect. He was staying away from home for days at a time, he was refusing to answer his phone.

"He even had me blocked from his Facebook page, in case I went on there and found his friends talking about her. Then finally he called me and he admitted it. He told me over the phone that he had met someone else.

"It was horrible, just so horrible, and I was heartbroken. I should have seen it coming, it was a familiar pattern, he had left someone else to be with me, and now he was doing the same again.

"But you know, it's in my nature to get over things. I've been through so much. I called up some girlfriends and we went out for lots of wine and men-hating chat. You could see the venom rising from our table. They told me what a rat James was.

"A couple of them had been jilted by their partners and, even though I had never met the guys, I said what rats they were too. It was that sort of session. Now, I'm over it. I still don't know who James is with, but I hope he's happy. He's actually a really nice bloke. It's just that he's not very good at splitting up."

Around the same time, Gail suffered another personal blow. She was at the bedside as her mother Sandra, aged just 60, died at the family home in Edinburgh, after a battle with cancer.

"Poor mum, she felt so helpless as she saw me facing one problem after another," Gail says. "When I came home bald, she didn't know how to deal with it. She held her hand up against my forehead, to see just my face, and said, 'oh, there you are!'. I tried to explain, 'Mum, I still have the same personality, still have the same heart'.

"Of course she was being a worried mum - worried that I was cold, that I was depressed - and she was afraid she couldn't help. We miss her so much, Honey and I. We often still write her letters. I just wish she could see me today - with hair again. In fact I'm sure she's looking down on me and feeling really pleased, because it's her familiar Gail."

Since meeting Jonny, Gail has become a manager, not just of his band New Vinyl but also another band, The Headstart, arranging gigs and hoping soon to negotiate a recording contract. She is also busy with her TV career, on Five show The Wright Stuff and the BBC's Missing.

No matter how her hair - still missing in a couple of areas of her scalp - grows back, she plans to keep up the work she has started with alopecia support groups.

She says: "I have met great friends, bald women like myself.

Half a dozen of us would go on nights out together wearing wigs, get chatted up by guys, then nip to the loo and swap hairpieces.

"The guys' faces would be a picture - trying to figure out how the blonde they were just with has suddenly turned into a brunette.

"But the children's groups have been the most fulfilling, working with kiddies who have lost their hair, through chemotherapy mainly.

"I've learned one thing, to enjoy life for the moment. I'm even trying a little stand-up comedy, I'm doing a show soon, where I'm being interviewed by comedian Scott Capurro. Matt Lucas is taking part too. Hope he'll still like me when he sees I'm not as bald as him any more!

"Who knows if this will last? I'm told that alopecia is totally unpredictable, hair can sometimes return and then fall out once again.

"But I'm delighted to be buying shampoos and conditioners again, and if we reach a stage when Honey can sit down and spend ages brushing it for me, then that will be heaven.

"That's all I expect of the future. That we're financially secure, that we're healthy and that I have Honey. Hair is just an add-on."