I am half Irish. *Pauses for audience to offer condolences.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of my heritage, love potatoes and all that, BUT the downside is it means I’ve been struck with a tinge of the ginge. I’m brunette, but a bit of orange does like to creep out now and then. Usually every time I have a picture taken, just so it can exist for all of time in a photo and never be erased from memory.
Now I don’t mind red hair, in fact I think it’s quite beautiful. The problem is 99% of the male population don’t, so I have grown fond of £5.99 home dye jobbys.
Colour in a box, 20 mins later, job done. The downside is, ladies you will understand, cheap hair dye tends to build up to the point your hair starts to really not like you and refuses to co-operate anytime you wish to take it outside of the house and into a public space.
Cue my trip to Boots for a cure. So there I am browsing the aisles when I find a box of “hair colour remover”. Colour B4 to be exact.
Assuming it would just remove the hair dye, I bought it and rushed home eager to return my hair to its once natural state.
I can’t be sure how many minutes in I was when I started to think my hair was going much MUCH lighter than expected, but I didn’t panic like I should have. Oh no, me, panic?! Instead I sat there and watched it grow lighter and lighter, sticking to the timing instructions on the packet because I’m such a trooper and such a stickler for rules.
What ensued was what can only be described as a national disaster. I’m talking, call a Cobra meeting because some nuclear shit has just gone down in my bathroom.
After washing out my hair I watched it dry into an alien life form. I’m talking a beige/ginger matted Afro, solid in some parts, and completely frazzled in others. I looked like a beauty queen…from Mars.
Turns out the colour remover likes to remove ALL colour from your hair. As in every last scrap of pigmentation, not just the hair dye.
Well done genius!
There’s pretty much no turning back once you hit the point of ginger Afro. It’s pretty more or less a dead end. There’s the shave it off option, but I have a skull shaped like a deformed light bulb, and there’s the just shove more dye on top of it and use a bottle of serum every time you wash it option.
For the mental well being of society I went with the latter and two years on I’m still having to cover up my dark secret every couple of months with a trip to the hairdressers.
My advice to anyone wanting to dye their hair at home? Don’t come and visit my Miranda salon. Ever!
I am the real life Miranda 