Writerings

Who are the people ruining Britain? Migrants? Experts? Judges? The RNLI? The Labour Party? Well, if you are a reader of, or a writer for, the Sunday Times, the answer is clear: people with dyed hair. The paper, along with its sister title**, loves to pick a boogeyman to blame for the country’s ills. See this recent excerpt from star columnist Jeremy Clarkson’s column:

“Well obviously, health is now an issue because someone with pink armpit hair and a keffiyeh recently decided that if you to go to the pub with your mates and have a couple of pints and a laugh and maybe a kebab on the way home, you may become a red-nosed Tory.” – Jeremy Clarkson, The Sunday Times, 14 February 2026

These fictional rainbow-haired straw men (and women) can be used for any purpose of “things we don’t like”. They’re useful punching bags because you can put any idea into their mouths, without attracting the complaints you would do so if say, the ridiculous notion was from a more defined or organised group such as the LGBT community, Extinction Rebellion, vegans or Palestinians. I’m not suggesting rainbow-haired people need to form their own special-interest group, but I believe it is an interesting phenomenon.

“the blue-haired city-dwelling Green-adjacent trans-lovers who may fill his cabinet “- Camilla Long, The Sunday Times, 21st June 2026

But to what extent is it a phenomenon? I took a trawl through the Times and Sunday Times website to get some hard data on the topic. I searched for mentions of a colour followed by hair. For example, “pink hair” or “blue hair” and compiled a spreadsheet of the results. I excluded any references to real people with these characteristics such as Megan Rapinoe, or indeed non-real people like Sulley from Monsters Inc.

This did give a few edge cases where journalists mentioned people with coloured hair in reports from real events. However, unless the person was named (such as “Death to disco is our motto,” says Flippers’ content manager Harv Frost, a 23-year-old with blue hair and thick black eyeliner.), I included them in my analysis.

I felt this approach was justified when I stumbled across Patrick Kidd using near identical anecdotes involving a person with coloured hair at two consecutive Corbyn-era Labour Party conferences.

“To be summoned to the stage is like being chosen for The Price is Right. The sheer excitement at getting your three minutes (often stretched past four). “The woman with the blue hair, Come On Down!”” – Patrick Kidd, The Times, 27th September 2017

“Some, deposited back in Row Z, wave manically or wear bright clothing in the hope that it will help them to catch the chairman’s eye and there is a touch of The Price Is Right about the way some celebrate after being called. “The woman with purple hair clutching an inflatable Keir Hardie, come on down!”” – Patrick Kidd, The Times, 24th September 2018

Overall, I found 45 instances across both papers stretching back to 2016 (post-Brexit and a handy 10-year timespan). Clarkson is by far the biggest offender, with ten such examples, over double that of Camilla Long who is in second place on four. This helps the Sunday paper to a big lead over its weekday counterpart with a final score of 28-17. However, while the still-broadsheet leans towards pink hair as the hair colour of the enemy, The Times is more likely to use blue or purple.

“-today the average bobby has pink hair and is to be found at Glastonbury chanting along to Jizzy Biscuit” – Jeremy Clarkson, The Sunday Times, 6th July 2025

“the Blob was Covid itself, and its spike proteins had now developed blue hair and challenging pronouns” – Hugo Rifkind, The Times, 29th November 2021

Looking at the data over time, we appear to be reaching peak-rainbow hair bashing, with seven mentions already just halfway through 2026. Pink hair also now seems to becoming more dominant.

From a qualitative angle, there has been a change as well. Where the recent trend is to use the rainbow-haired people as figures for mockery, the articles from further back in the trawl are rather quaint. People with blue or purple hair are harmless figures of fascination. People with interesting hobbies and lives outside of the politics and comment sections. See these two examples of people with blue hair almost ten years apart.

There’s a glam cohort – all eyebrows and extensions – as well as some with tattoos and blue hair. – Harriet Walker, The Times, 4th February 2017

Cosseted/blue-haired/nose-ringed/public sector SJW – Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times, 17th January 2026

Does any of this mean anything? Sure, it’s lazy, but problematic? Eh, seems a stretch. In a world where The Spectator is ramping up criticism of Muslims, it seems somewhat trivial to hand-wring about a fictional person with pink hair. But it is another reminder that the press love a distraction and an easy target to blame for Britain’s perceived ills. If you’re not one of these ridiculous people, the argument goes, then you must be against them and instead support the views of the esteemed columnist.

“Social media is full of young people with pink hair chanting “tax the rich” “– Jeremy Clarkson, The Sunday Times, 30th November 2025

So as someone who, with the exception of Red Nose Day 2005, has never dyed my brown hair, I proudly stand alongside my rainbow-haired fellow humans to call out this lazy journalism.

* with apologies to Martin Luther King

** I started looking at other newspapers such as The Mail and the Express but their website search functions were dreadful