Michael Attree

Michael Attree

English satirist

Moustache type: Handlebar

Born: 22 4 1965, place of birth unknown to blogger





Some men in this book, one feels, have moustaches almost by chance, as if they followed the fashion of their times or didn’t like their upper lip. Michael “Atters” Attree would certainly not fall in with their number.

Atters is the Editor of Roguishness for the satirical magazine The Chap. Readers are treated to a double-page article each issue where Atters writes, like Hunter S. Thompson on Martinis, about debauched evenings out in Soho or finding the enlightened moustache in Bollywood.

Atters also writes for Flux magazine and The Erotic Review. Away from journalism, he has turned his kid-gloved hand to TV producing and antiques dealing.

Atters is the only living member of ‘The Handlebar Club’ (started by Jimmy Edwards, qv) to be included in the catalogue. He has been chairman of the World Beard and Moustache Championships and has a website called Ministry of Moustaches. Along with Gandhi (qv), Dr Martin Luther King (qv) and Albert Einstein (qv), Atters must be considered one of the giants of this catalogue.

Clement Attlee

Clement Attlee

English politician

Moustache type: Trapezoid

Born: 3 1 1883 (London, England)
Died: 8 10 1967 (London, England, aged 84)


In 1945, the Conservative party, led by Britain’s heroic wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was defeated in a landslide general election by Clement Attlee’s Labour party. In 1942 Attlee had been installed as Deputy Prime Minister in Britain’s wartime coalition government, effectively placing him in charge of domestic affairs, and the British people were evidently impressed.

The Attlee government established the NHS and nationalised the Bank of England. He led the Labour party in government and opposition for 20 years before retiring and being made a peer.

On the first anniversary of VE day, the 8th June, 1946, the BBC was broadcasting for just the second day since shutdown in 1939. The Sunday Chronicle called the filming of the parade the BBC’s ‘finest two hours’ as they brought viewers ‘the cufflinks on Mr Churchill’s sleeves and the bristles of Mr Attlee’s moustache.’ They don’t make TV like that anymore.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Turkish politician

Moustache type: Pencil

Born: 19 5 1881 (Salonika, Ottoman Empire)
Died: 10 11 1938 (Istanbul, Turkey, aged 57, cirrhosis of the liver)




In 1935, as part of his drive to make Turkey a modern nation state, Mustafa Kemal passed The Family Names act, which required the population to adopt a surname. He chose Atatürk, which means “father of the Turks.” Atatürk’s name was well deserved. Having repelled the Allied forces at the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, he then became Commander in Chief of the Turkish forces in their victorious War of Independence against the Allied powers, who had sought to divide up Anatolia between them. In 1923 he founded the modern Turkish state to replace the crumbling Ottoman Empire, and became the new country’s first president.

Kemal at once embarked on a huge-scale modernising drive which prescribed secularism, female emancipation, a Latinized alphabet, and educational and cultural reform. A personality cult around him remains in Turkey to this day.

Atatürk must be considered a super villain for moustache lovers. Whereas turncoats like Jeremy Bowen and Phil “The Power” Taylor simply removed theirs, Atatürk compounded the sin of shaving his by banning the moustache altogether in Turkey in a dress reform made even more nefarious by its banning of the fez hat.

Gordon Astley

Gordon Astley

English Radio DJ

Moustache type: Caterpillar

Place and date of birth unknown to blogger


In the days when he had a beard, Gordon Astley played second fiddle to Keith Chegwin on the 1970s children’s pop music quiz Cheggars Plays Pop. Since then the eponymous host has sadly proven everyone who said “Cheggars can’t be boozers” wrong, while Astley has gone on to smaller and worse things. After an initial upturn in his fortunes when he was chosen as Chris Tarrant’s replacement as the host of the eighth series of the madcap Saturday morning show Tiswas (there was no ninth series), Astley became a local DJ on BBC Radio West Midlands.

Since then he has graduated to the mid-morning slot on BBC Southern Counties Radio where he “chats to the biggest names visiting Surrey, Sussex and North-East Hampshire”, including Barry Cryer and Deana (daughter of Dean) Martin. He has also pursued numerous other pursuits in attempts to reclimb the celebrity beanstalk, including magic, motivational speaking, recording a non-charting anthem for World Cup 2006, palm and tarot reading and graphology – he is the “Official Graphologist to the England Cricket Team” (or was in 2002 anyway).

Astley has listed various amusing facts about himself on his BBC website including the fact that he “hates racism and foreigners”, “would most like to be stuck in a lift with a lift engineer” and that his “moustache is real and not stuck on.” Well done Gordon.

Asterix

Asterix

Gaulish comic book character

Moustache type: Fu Manchu

Created by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo in Pilote magazine (1959)

Asterix is a warrior from the first century BC and the titular hero of a series of comic books by Goscinny and Uderzo, the first of which was written in 1961, two years after the character’s debut in a French magazine. Asterix is prime defender, alongside his friend Obelix (qv), of the only Gaulish village which retains its independence from the Roman Empire. The continued failure of the Roman army to conquer Asterix’s village is attributable to the secret potion brewed by the village’s venerable druid, Getafix. This potion gives superhuman strength to those who ingest it, and Asterix is the most frequent beneficiary.

The village’s colourful characters include Chief Vitalstatistix, whose only fear is that the sky will fall on his head, Cacofonix, the tone-deaf bard and Geriatrix, an ancient man with a beautiful, buxom young wife.

The fact that all the male Gauls have moustaches and none of the Romans do is almost certainly a contributing factor in their ability to hold out, although Goscinny and Uderzo presume upon the individual reader’s literary perspicacity to work this out.

Rene Artois

René Artois

French sitcom character

Moustache type: Nailbrush

Portrayed by Gorden Kaye in the British comedy series ‘Allo ‘Allo (1982-92)

René Artois is a café proprietor in a small town in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Fundamentally concerned with self-preservation, René attempts to maintain good relations with each of the war’s various combatants, including the occupying Germans and the French Resistance.

His self-interest extends to domestic affairs. René has a hard time keeping his secret romance with his waitress Yvette a secret from his wife Edith, and keeping his secret romance with his waitress Maria a secret from Yvette (and Edith).

Most of the episodes’ humour revolves around René’s love affairs, his resistance to helping the Resistance, his interrogation by the Germans, his interaction with various national stereotypes - including the British Airmen he is hiding - and his attempts to keep hidden an extremely valuable painting – The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies.

It is noteworthy in ‘Allo ‘Allo that all the men on the Allied side have moustaches and all the Germans are clean-shaven. An admirable rewriting of history by Messrs. Croft and Lloyd.