30-year beard is just the ticket for Charlie (From Gazette)

30-year beard is just the ticket for Charlie

10:00am Saturday 22nd September 2012 in News

A MAN who spends hours getting his beard ready for competition has taken the top prize at the National Beard and Moustache Championships.

Charlie Saville, 49, took home the prize for the best freestyle beard at the competition in Brighton last Saturday.

He has been ‘competing’ in the facial hair world since 2005, and has had a beard for 30 years.

This is the first time he has picked up a prize.

“I think I am single handedly doing the O-Zone layer no favours with the sheer amount of hair spray it takes to get the beard looking the way it has to look,” said Mr Saville, of Chappel Road, in Great Tey.

“But it’s worth it, this is the first time I have won anything.”

Before each competition, Mr Saville spends hours sitting down as his wife and friends style his beard with wax and large amounts of hair spray.

“I just sit there and they do all the work,” he added.

“All I have to do is turn up and look a bit eccentric for the competition.”

Mr Saville, a member of the competition organising committee, is also a consultant brewer, travelling around north Essex testing breweries’ ales.

“It’s just about the most fitting profession, I reckon,” he said.

“Brewers don’t mind if you have some strange facial hair - maybe it is expected now even.”

The veteran member of the British Beard Club also champions the future of the competition.

“In the past it might have been seen as a game for old farts like me, but there are younger people coming into it now and I would say the majority of people would be between 20 and 40.