Hair today, gone tomorrow, but do I mind?

Cures for male baldness are always said to be "just round the corner". They're like the philosopher's stone, the alchemists' substance that could turn base metals into gold. Now scientists in America are working on a new treatment that promises to "bring hope" to baldies.

The drug in development suppresses the protein that causes hair loss. But it doesn't sound ideal, since the active ingredient will have to be applied to the scalp via a cream or ointment, and not everyone can be bothered to spend five minutes a day plastering unguents on to his scalp.

I write as someone who has known what it is to be thinning on top since my last year at school. I'm 42, so I suppose I have come to terms with it. But then, it doesn't matter so much now, because I'm middle-aged. Men don't like going bald because they associate it with getting old and decrepit and losing potency. This is why some politicians employ highly skilled hairdressers to maintain the illusion of a thick head of hair. David Cameron, as sketchwriters have noted, has a comb-back, in which hair is brushed back and carefully positioned to cover a bald patch. The trouble is, when he gets agitated and shakes his head, everything shifts and the bald patch appears to get bigger.

When my self-confidence was at its feeblest, in my twenties, I found great consolation in the example of Jack Nicholson. After all, I reasoned, Jack's receding hairline, which he made no attempt to conceal, didn't cause him any problems. In general, of course, Hollywood presents a grossly distorted picture: virtually all leading men are blessed with absurdly luxuriant thatches; bald blokes are an oddity. It's the other way round in reality. But, bombarded with these idealised images of youth and virility, no wonder men are beating a path to the transplant clinics.

It's not only films and television, though. There's something deep in the male psyche that causes men to fret about "androgenic alopecia", as the multi-million-pound hair-loss industry likes to call it. We slapheads may pretend we don't care. We may even shave off our last remaining tufts in a fist-shaking gesture of defiance. But at a basic level it still bothers us.

Otherwise, no one would go to the trouble and expense of the various solutions offered: transplants, in which hair is harvested from the dense growth at the back of the head and painstakingly replanted follicle by follicle at the front; weaves, where a toupee is woven into the existing hair; and even hair-in-a-can - spray-on hair thickener, which promises to "volumise" the few remaining strands by coating them with gunk, rather like mascara. And, of course, man would never have invented the combover.

Nothing demonstrates the human genius for self-deception better than the vain effort to hide a smooth, gleaming crown by combing a few very long strands from just above one ear and sticking them across the dome of the head. These concealing arrangements are fascinating from a psychological point of view. Highly sophisticated, intelligent people go in for combovers. They must know that they're not deceiving anybody. I suspect, rather, that the wearer gains a feeling of reassurance, through the sensation of a well-covered head. (Wearing a hat gives the same benefit.)

For example, photographs show that, at the sad end of his life, Ernest Hemingway, a writer preoccupied with what it is to be manly, affected what you might call a swirlover. He swept the hair over his bald pate in a spiral shape. He must have wanted to create an impression of amplitude, but it does look a bit odd. And however much lacquer he used, the hairdo wouldn't have held up in a strong wind. Another clever man who did something similar was Anthony Burgess. He gathered all his hair at the back and combed it forward till it nearly covered his eyes. Even the great anthropologist Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape and Manwatching, with all his insights into human behaviour - even he had a combover for a while.

It is easy to snigger, but the key question for the millions of us who belong to the bald community is this: if researchers came up with a proper cure, which made your hair grow back exactly as it was when you were 16 years old, with no side-effects and no creams or ointments, would you take it?

Would I? Well, perhaps, but I'm not sure. I fear it's too late. Being bald becomes part of a person's identity: think of Charles the Bald, the ninth-century Holy Roman Emperor. A dense and bushy coiffage just wouldn't be me. Our children wouldn't recognise me. As it is, they delight in the satisfying noise that slapping my head makes, and in the teasing. "What do you know about haircuts?" my five-year-old daughter asks. "You haven't got any hair." I would hate to deprive them of that pleasure.