KEY POINTS:
"Vanity, thy name is woman" is a quote often attributed to William Shakespeare and it's wrong on two counts. One, because the actual quote is "Frailty, thy name is woman" and two, because the vainest creatures on the planet right now are 8 and 9-year-old boys.
So vain are these baby David Beckhams and copy-cat Dan Carters that they refuse to wear their bike helmets to school because the helmets will mess their gelled-up hair-dos.
I dismissed the claims of Massey University's Kane Hopkins last week as the rantings of a nutter.
He wanted cycle helmets banned to encourage more women and children to take up cycling. He said the reason kids weren't biking to school was because the helmets messed their hair.
But then the dads rang me and confirmed it was true.
The kids liked biking well enough - but many of them were cycling down the end of the street then taking their helmets off and biking to school with the helmets attached to the handle bars.
Confiscating the bikes when they were sprung, and worse - confiscating the hair gel - didn't work.
I asked the dads whether they'd pointed out how difficult it would be to have "styley" hair when the kids were recovering from cranial surgery but, of course, the whole action and consequence thing has yet to kick in at that age.
Thirteen-year-old Lorcan had the best idea. Rather than ban helmets, he said, do what he did. Bike to school with the gel in your pocket - and do your hair when you get there. Brilliant.
