Glad to be grey? It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of grey roots must be in want of a bottle of hair dye – or a darn good hairdresser.

The fine art of covering our greying hair is a matter of pride – and prejudice.

For every woman who proudly declares she’s glad to be grey, thousands more are sneaking off to Superdrug in their lunch hour to buy a bottle of Nice’n’Easy.

No wonder the hair colourant market raked in more than £206 million in the UK last year.

Admitting to grey hair is, for many women, the last taboo. The equation is simple: grey hair equals getting old, and the modern woman just doesn’t do that – at least not without a fight.

And what a battle.

We spend hours alone in our bathrooms, pulling on plastic gloves, rubbing Vaseline into our hairlines, and squeezing cold, gloopy hair dye on to our roots, finally popping a plaggy bag over our heads until we are done (then praying that our very own Mr Darcy doesn’t come a-calling).

Otherwise it’s a trip to the salon, where we have to write off an afternoon, as well as the weekly grocery bill, on having a “touch- up”.

You can see why we want to keep quiet about it all. It doesn’t show us in the best light – proud, profligate, phoney – there’s not a lot of honour in the pursuit of a youthful head of hair.

I do admire women who boldy go where few of us dare and decide to let nature take its course. They wear their mane of grey with pride. York’s own Judi Dench hasn’t found a head of greys stopping her from success on the silver screen. Ditto Helen Mirren, who cleverly blends her greys with blonde highlights.

But for the majority of women, it’s difficult to contemplate going au naturel once they’ve started down the cover-up cul-de-sac.

If they don’t keep up their high maintenance programme of re-touching their roots, within a few weeks the badger streak appears – and the game’s up.

Ironically, for many women, dyeing their hair every four to six weeks is a cross they choose to bear in order to look and feel like themselves.

I know I’m putting off the inevitable. I will go grey gracefully one day. Just not yet.

Which is great news for my hairdresser at, least.

• IT’S been a bad week for politicians – and broadcasters.

More MPs have been named and shamed – by offering to use their influence at a price (five grand a day in the case of former Transport Secretary Stephen Byers). Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon were outed too in the sting staged by Channel 4’s Dispatches. Labour was quick to suspend all from the Parliamentary Labour Party, but one can’t help but wonder if Gordon Brown smirked just for a second at the news. It was Hewitt and Hoon after all who staged their kamikaze coup attempt on the PM back in January – and were dubbed “dumb and dumber” by the red tops. The question remains: which is which?

But the BBC is in the dock too, after shelving its documentary on Lord Ashcroft, the Conservative party’s billionaire backer and deputy chairman, whose tax affairs remain a skeleton in the Tory closet. BBC insiders say the documentary was “postponed” because bosses caved in to Tory demands not to run it before the election.

Whatever was unearthed by the Panorama team who were sent out at licence-payers’ expense to Belize and the Turks and Caicos Islands (where Ashcroft has business interests) deserves to be aired before the election. We have a right to know where Ashcroft makes his money – after all, that cash might well buy David Cameron the keys to Number Ten.