- My name's Gary Lammin.
I'm from London
and I'm a musician and an actor.
When my hair started to first fall out
I tried to do everything that I possibly could,
with lotions and that kind of thing.
And then I done the only thing that you can actually do.
Which is to crop it short.
That didn't suit me one little bit.
And talking with my friends,
they were saying things like,
"Well, you know it's just a vanity thing.
Get over it.
It's just an ego thing."
And although I considered them to have a good point,
in my heart of hearts,
I knew that that really weren't were it was at.
And it wasn't until I came here
and had the procedure,
that after looking in the mirror,
I then realized that what it was,
I was feeling when they were telling me
it's just a vanity thing,
what it actually was that I was feeling,
it was more about an identity issue.
You live for all these years with
that perception of yourself.
If you've suddenly gotta change that perception overnight,
for instance, by cropping your hair,
well, go for it.
But if it don't suit you,
what you gonna do about it?
It felt to me like I was gonna have to
put a football on a penalty spot in front of 80,000 people,
and I had to get it right,
i.e. I had to get that ball in that net, okay.
Because if it went wrong,
you're gonna be regretting that for the rest of your life.
So I knew that whoever I went to
would have to put that ball on that penalty spot
and score that goal.
And when I came here,
Hair Restoration Blackrock,
as soon as I walked out the door,
I thought to myself,
I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do it here.
There is a complete transparency of what goes on here.
There was even possibly quite a self-effacing attitude.
Nobody was blowing their own trumpet,
saying that we're the best.
But there was a feeling here,
instinctive feeling that these people were the best.
Don't matter how confident you are,
you're always gonna have
that slight little bit of apprehension.
And I remember the girls being very supportive
and talking you through the day
and explaining what was gonna happen.
And I'd read up on it as well.
So everything that they were telling me
was ticking boxes
because I'd already done me research
and knew that was gonna be the procedure.
But it was just nice to have it endorsed again.
Even though you know that the follicles are gonna fall out,
it's part of the process,
it's still quite disconcerting.
After you've made that journey,
and you see how well it was,
the progress that it was making.
And then to see that,
oh crikey, no.
But you just gotta, sort of, hold your horses on that.
Keep your hair on, so to speak,
and not freak out.
And then all of a sudden,
then you suddenly realize how thick that hair's becoming.
And you look back to how you felt
when you first had it done.
And I genuinely felt that,
when I first had it done,
immediately after the procedure,
for that's as good as it was gonna get.
I'd be 100% happy with that.
But then when it suddenly starts thickening up
after the follicles have fell out,
and you actually see what the entirety is gonna look like,
then that is quite,
that's quite a stand back moment, yeah.
A couple of me friends,
as they were talking to me,
I could see as they were talking to me,
they was kind of looking at my hairline.
And so I kind of pre-empted that,
and I went, "Well, what do you reckon then?"
They went, "You've done something, haven't you?"
I've gone, "Yeah, I got my hair back.
I got my hairline back."
"Well, what do you mean by that?"
I said I've had a hair follicle replacement.
And this is only a couple of months.
Wait till six months when it starts growing.
All three of my friends
who I told on separate occasions,
they went, "Wait, it's actually got growing?"
And all of three of these guys
are losing their hair as well.
And I've had phone calls from,
"Gary, have you heard of that place over in Dublin?
What would you say the name of that place was?"
So I think they might be coming over here themselves, yeah.
Now when I look in the mirror,
I see the guy that I knew 15 years ago.
And that's the guy that I can identify with.
That's the guy that I lived with all the time in the mirror.
And you see that guy again after 15 years.
And all of a sudden,
you take a very long deep breath.
That's me, yeah.