At the age of seven, I contracted alopecia areata, an infection of the scalp that causes hair to fall out, leaving bald patches. Unlike normal male-pattern baldness, the back and sides of the head are often the first areas to be affected. The lost hair sometimes returns and a bald patch is filled, but then you lose hair somewhere else.

By the time I reached my early 20s, I was having steroids injected into my scalp. These worked for a time and when I married at 25 I had almost a full head of hair. Over the following five years, however, it shrank back into small tufts.

I did my best with the hair that remained, spending hours in front of the mirror spreading lifeless strands over the barren wastelands. Yet the moment I stepped out of the house, a playful gust of wind would wreck my handiwork. Children in the supermarket would stare and young people would shout, "Baldy!" or "Kojak!" at me on the street. When I went out with a girl to the theatre or cinema, I would insist that we sat in the back row - not for the reason that most young men chose the back row, but because I didn't want anyone looking at my head.

At 29, I decided to apply for a wig on the NHS (two, in fact, since one would need to be sent for cleaning every month). Made of real hair, they stuck to my scalp with double-sided tape.

My new headgear made its debut when I was best man at a friend's wedding. I spent the day constantly rushing to the toilet to ensure the thing was still sitting in its proper place.

One of the difficulties with wearing a wig is that the colour fades - in my case, from dark brown to almost ginger. When a new one is required, you exchange your old number for what looks like a shiny new head of hair. Anyone can spot the sudden change.

There are other practical challenges. When I played volleyball, I often wouldn't go up for a smash at the net in case my hair jumped, too. And overnight stays were fraught with danger. One night at a friend's house I became terrified that her children might burst into the room and see me lying in bed naked from the neck up, so I dragged some heavy furniture across the door to bar entry. When our friend brought us a cup of tea the following morning, she came up against this immovable object. Hearing the commotion outside, I had to leap out of bed, put on my wig, move the furniture and open the door to my quizzical hostess.

Eventually, I decided to dispense with my wigs and go "topless". It was Duncan Goodhew who made me reach this decision. Seeing him hairless at the 1980 Moscow Olympics impressed me. However, there were problems. Wearing a wig for 13 years had given me a two-tone look - a weather-beaten face against a lily-white head. I needed to acquire a tan to ensure that head and face matched.

Wearing my wig as usual, I would drive to a lonely spot in the country, park my car and set off along some deserted footpath with a bare head. Returning to the car, I would replace the wig and drive home. These wigless walks went on for many weeks.

I finally said goodbye to my wig at the start of a three-week motoring holiday in Italy. On the way to Dover, I turned off the M40 - and the unveiling ceremony took place. I passed the wig to my wife who stowed it in the glove compartment, where it remained for the rest of the holiday.

In Florence, we bumped into my wife's boss. He was dumbfounded - first by the coincidence of our meeting like this so far from home and then by his employee's hairless husband. He rattled off some remark about skinheads and invited us for a drink. That chance meeting gave me the confidence I needed to face friends, neighbours and work colleagues when I returned home.

Before leaving Florence, I sat for a street artist. A large crowd gathered and I rather revelled in the attention. I hung the cartoon in the downstairs lavatory, a memento of my liberation.

One of the benefits of being wigless is that you feel a lot cleaner. After a shower in the campsite sanitary block, it is a relief that there is not a sweaty, sand-filled wig hanging on the peg. And I can now walk the deck of a cross-Channel ferry without the nagging fear that part of me might be swept out to sea.

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