Wha’s like us…Shirley Manson

IT HAS become fashionable to diss redheads as though flame-haired tempters and temptresses are somehow a sub-species. This matters in Scotland where the proportion of “gingers” is extremely high, with 13 per cent of the population having red hair, the highest rate in Europe.

No less than 40 per cent of Scots carry the recessive ginger gene. So step forward Shirley Manson, the 45-year-old lead singer of pop band Garbage, who was not only born with red hair but has admitted to spending considerable amounts of her fortune – around $3,000 a year at a posh Los Angeles salon frequented by the stars – keeping it that way. The Edinburgh-born vocalist says she once toyed with being a blonde – describing the decision as a “mild mental breakdown” – but reverted back to her natural colour after an hour of fretting. She says she comes from a long line of redheads, dating back to the Viking age, and her mother and her sister also have red locks. As Manson makes clear, far from being an embarrassment, red hair should be a source of national pride.