I had to have my passport renewed recently, which involved making a major decision. When I’d last seen the inside of a photo-booth, I had stubble. Now, there was a full beard. If I resisted the razor, and had my luxuriance endorsed by Her Britannic Majesty’s secretary of state, it was here to stay. And — it is. I wasn’t going to be persuaded by any amount of “peak beard” editorials and hairless naysayers. I love my beard: it gives the illusion of a chin, where none existed before. I get agreeable attention, where little existed before. And it’s opened up a whole world of grooming that I barely knew existed, from hot towel treatments to balms and unguents scented with bay rum.

There is also, I note, an army of me. The reports of the demise of the beard have been greatly exaggerated. And the business around beards is, pardon the pun, a growth industry, particularly for niche lifestyle brands. “Our customers are spending on average 20 per cent more, year on year,” says Freddy Furber, founder of the Percy Nobleman men’s grooming brand. “Many men are ditching the razor, and using beard trimmers instead. The growth in men’s grooming products has come hand-in-hand with a steady 8 per cent decline in the number of men shaving over the past five years.”

Beard or no beard, men do crave a certain kind of luxury with their morning toilette. As well as having fortnightly trims at my local barber, I keep my neck tidy with a vintage-styled double-edged Aesop razor and their Shaving Serum. Then I use Sailors beard oil from Margate-based Haeckels, with seaweed foraged from the local beach as a key ingredient. Of course I do.