I wish someone had told me a long time ago that glace cherries don’t taste like fresh cherries, or that you shouldn’t eat six packs of Tic Tac mints off the bat unless you want to be ill.

Had I known these things then I’m sure I could have avoided many unpleasant situations over the course of my relatively short life.

You would think that growing up in a family full of hairdressers I’d have picked up a few tips that meant I would avoid ending up with hair like an orangutan that enjoys sticking its fingers into electrical outputs.

Sadly, my brain is less a sponge and more a thin film of kitchen foil that serves only to reflect any information and common sense as far away from me as possible.

In a characteristically spur of the moment, crazy instance I decided that I wanted my hair to look like a cross between Gwen Stefani and Rapunzel.

My poor hair has been ravaged over the years.

The trouble is that I get bored easily, so unfortunately my poor follicles have suffered greatly at the hands of Bob Bleach and Harry Hair Extensions.

The condition of my hair is weak, to say the least.

I readily purchased a huge bottle of bleach, some colours and set to work destroying my strands.

I was warned by those more knowledgeable than myself that the transition from red to blonde wouldn’t be quite as easy as I imagined.

As expected, I didn’t listen.

So off I toddled to stick a lot of harmful chemicals onto a scalp that had experienced more burning than London’s Pudding Lane bakery.

I smothered the paste onto my hair.

As I anticipated my head became very hot very quickly.

The itchiness was driving me crazy.

I resorted to sticking a wooden spatula under the Home Bargains carrier bag hat/hairnet that I had made to trap the heat being emitted from my scalp.

I should have left the colouring potion on for another 20 minutes, but the fact that it was producing more radiation than Chernobyl and interfering with my breathing was becoming a little too much for me.

I quickly rinsed it off.

I had to do this by hanging over the bath with a Pyrex jug because I’m poverty stricken and have no shower.

I looked more like Mick Hucknell than I usually do.

My brother appeared to second this opinion.

He gave me a rendition of the Simply Red hit Money’s Too Tight (To Mention).

Through the medium of song I was reduced to a sobbing mess on the landing.

Composing myself, I decided to ‘sort it out’.

This was mainly because there’s no way I could face the Spar staff when I bought my weekly Terry’s Chocolate Orange and bottle of Tango.

Again, I applied more peroxide and an ashy, blonde colour along with half a tub of Blondor, which I understand to be bleach that looks like talc.

Fifty minutes and third degree burns later I draped myself over the bath and set to work.

I’m happy to say that I managed to get the Gwen Stefani look.

By that I mean if Gwen only had two strands of hair.