Men baldly going under knife thanks to Rooney

DOZENS of men in Notts are following the lead of Wayne Rooney and having a hair transplant, according to an aesthetic clinic.

Mapperley Park Clinic, in Mansfield Road, has seen a 200 per cent rise in inquiries from men since Rooney's well-documented transplant last June.

Paul Stapleton, managing director of the clinic, said: "We've been doing it since 2006 but on a very low-key basis.

"Since Wayne Rooney had his, demand has increased radically.

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"When you've got someone like him being open about it, people aren't as worried or embarrassed about it."

In the year before Rooney's transplant, the clinic performed ten hair transplant operations. It has since performed 25 in less than a year.

It expects demand to rise further and has forecast that it will perform 50 in the next year.

One of the clinic's recent patients is Andrew Icke, 38, who has been steadily losing his hair over the past ten years.

Eventually, he decided to forget about it and shave his head but his job as a hairdresser proved to be a constant reminder.

"I did get a lot of jokes about being a hairdresser and not having any hair," said Andrew, who owns Blends Barbers, in Stapleford.

After researching hair transplants for five years, Andrew bit the bullet in early April this year – and admits he was influenced by Rooney's transformation.

"When someone like him has the surgery, then I think it makes it more acceptable," he said.

The procedure was carried out by surgeon Harris Haseeb, who also works as a plastic surgeon at Nottingham City Hospital and has completed 700 hair transplants since 1996.

Andrew opted to go for a follicular unit transplant procedure, which involves a donor strip being taken from the back of the head and the hair follicles being extracted individually.

The strip is then stitched up and each follicle is grafted into tiny incisions made in the bald area.

The hair then falls out but the hair follicles remain and eventually grow as normal.

The procedure won't be a quick fix for Andrew, as he'll need to go back for a further operation if he wants to cover the whole area of baldness.

Mr Haseeb said: "It is a big area and that's why we can only do the front area.

"If we were to do the whole scalp, which includes the crown, the mid-scalp and the front, he would require 4,500 grafts.

"The problem is that we don't have enough donor hair in Andrew's case – there's only so much we can extract in one go. He can have more done later and that is the plan."

Andrew had his operation in April and is still at the stage where his transplanted hair is falling out but he's optimistic about the future.

He said: "Hopefully I'll spend the next six months growing it back and after that it will start to look just like a normal head of hair."

Read the full story tomorrow in the Post's Weekend magazine.