A dear friend eventually persuaded me to lose the beard. "You'll never get a girl with that disgusting thing on your face", she said. A powerful argument, I thought, and did the deed, with rapid and highly satisfactory results. I believe this photo might have been taken by Les Chappell, musical-and-life-partner of singer Lene Lovich, friends who I'd known since 1970, when we all had rooms above a Greek fish-and-chip shop off the Tottenham Court Road. I would have had this taken because I was trying to promote one project or another, now lost in the landfill of time.

Photographer: Les Chappell (?)