IT could be the most significant medical breakthrough of our age, at least when it comes to non-life threatening conditions. Baldness has swept across Western society in the last 25 years, caused by soap from washing up liquids getting into the water supply and playing hormonal havoc with the bodies of men. Other parts of the world that use more traditional cleaning methods have remained unaffected.

This week, however, it was widely reported across the Western world that a cure for baldness could be within our grasp. Scientists in the US have used stem cells that allow natural-looking hair to grow through the skin. Well, the skin of mice.

Although, it is rare to see male-pattern baldness occur in mice (because they do not use washing-up liquid), it is believed that the controversial creatures have enough in common with us – cheese, squeaking and so forth – to allow the same principles to hold across the species.

One scientist at the Institute for Advanced Baldie Research, in California, said: “This is a critical breakthrough in the development of cell-based hair-loss therapies.”

Is it, aye? We’ve heard such claims before. Disgracefully, some European Union countries spend more on baldness cures than they do on nuclear weapons and, as in other areas of medical research in the West, the result generally amounts to little more than frequent newspaper stories about a cure becoming available “in ten years’ time”, something that never transpires.

However, with stem cell research, it’s a whole new bald game, offering remedy for a condition that has caused widespread distress, lowering the tone of our streets and leading to an aesthetic deficit in important public places such as discotheques and pubs.

The rise and follicle of this phenomenon has occasioned surprisingly little comment. It’s rather like sex was in Victorian times. Everybody knew it was there, but nobody talked about it. It’s the same with baldness today. Possibly, it’s because we all have bald friends, even if we would never be seen with them in public.

However, while the Victorians failed to find a cure for sex, we may be on the verge of remedying a similarly fleshy issue that is also associated with stigma and moral decay.

Slapheads have suffered appalling prejudice over the years, and still do not have the right to vote in many rural areas of England. In progressive Scotland, however, such practices were outlawed some year ago (you may remember the Daily Mail headline: “Nats enlist slapheads in independence push”) and, today, only one measure remains on the statute book regarding squat baldies and that is that, in summer, they must all wear shin-length shorts.

Perhaps baldness will be missed. To adapt the words of John Lennon, “Imagine there’s no slapheads”. Women seem to like baldness in men, but it doesn’t matter what women think. It is not a good look.

This week, an influential article in the Daily Telegraph – written by a woman, as it happens, and a sensible one at that – pleaded for men to to stop getting these awful buzz-cuts at the first sign of male pattern baldness.

As she says, it seems to be compulsory and yet, even in progressive, politically correct Scotland, you will not find legislation making it so. Here, having said that, there are still a few brave rebels, such as the popular psephologist John Curtice, who maintain a fly-away mane of hair at the back and sides of their heids, despite having a crown or top where every last follicle has fled.

These men are to be applauded and, if we get to the stage where the research comes good, and bald fellows are offered the chance to put mice on their heads for several months until the hair grows back, then the likes of Mr Curtice should be among the first to receive this treatment.

That is, of course, if he wants it. Scotland likes to think of itself as an inclusive society, and we live in an age where all sorts of peculiarities are tolerated. Quite right too. But we could be on the verge of a world in which baldness joins the history books, something to be marvelled at by the children of future ages.

THE film Robert the Bruce went on general release yesterday, prompting fears of a nationalist uprising in many towns and cities over the weekend.

Directed by Australian Richard Gray, the hero is played by script co-writer Angus Macfadyen, reprising his role in 1995’s Braveheart. If you haven’t heard of Braveheart, it faithfully followed true events in the life of Sir William Wallace and became popular across the world, except in Scotland, where it was accused of portraying the country in a positive light.

This latest historical extravaganza “does not glorify war”, according to Macfadyen, and is more about Scots versus Scots than anything else; so, just some gentle head-butting presumably. No Englishmen were injured during the making of this film.

Our critic described it as “a film about perseverance” – of the hero, I should add, not the audience. It does sound intriguing.

At the time of going to press, the film hasn’t been banned yet in Scotland, but experts expect letters pages to start filling up shortly with complaints that Bruce is wearing the wrong socks or that his hat is on back to front for the period, thereby discrediting the whole project and undermining its evil independence theme.

I COULD have died. It’s not something I think about too much, but occasionally when, in vacant or in pensive mood, such as writing a newspaper column, my mind returns to that windy day many years ago when a chimney nearly fell on ma heid.

The incident occurred in Edinburgh’s Tollcross area. I was waddling furth, minding my own business for a change, when the weighty structure broke free from its moorings on a tenement roof and landed at my feet, missing my onion by inches.

Oddly enough, I reacted calmly, observing the shattered remnants in a bovine manner but, when I got round the corner, the possibility of my expiring hit me and I raised one eyebrow emotionally.

I witter thus in the wake of news that incidences of falling masonry in our crumbling capital have quadrupled in the past four years. Of course, there have been one or two terrible incidents, where people were not as lucky as I.

To this day, I never go out in Edinburgh without wearing a protective helmet. Most folk don’t leave the house in the morning thinking, ‘I sure hope some masonry doesn’t fall on ma heid today’. But I do.

I HAVE sat in James Herriot’s car. I speak of the vehicle driven by the Yorkshire vet in All Creatures Great and Small.

I’m a huge fan of the books and the DVDs too. I spent weeks in the Yorkshire countryside traversing the same dales as did James, though I’ve never stuck my arm up a cow’s peculiars.

The car – from the TV show – was in The World of James Herriot, a museum at the man’s former house and veterinary practice in Thirsk (Darrowby in the books).

Now the show, which The Herald said had “somehow defined a gentler age”, is to return to our screens, with Channel 5 broadcasting a new series.

I do look forward to it. Life most certainly was no picnic back when the stories were set, beginning in the mid-1930s, but the themes of kindness, community and compassion (for animals and folk) are all the more powerful for that.

For anyone who’s ever had a pet put down, the words of Siegfried Farnon might comfort: “[The] last thing a funny little creature like Theo feels is the touch of a human hand, and the last thing he hears is the gentleness of a human voice.”