DAVID Cameron is a blank sheet of paper. It's very nice paper and all, with two addresses, one in London, the other in Oxfordshire.

The watermark suggests this is quality stuff too - hold it up to the light and you can make out the words "son of Eton and Oxford".

But the paper, however attractive, remains untouched by word or thought. Tony Blair's notepaper, although dog-eared, is of a similar standard and also bears a classy watermark, the legend "son of Fettes College and Oxford". Unlike David's paper, however, Tony's is covered in word, thought and deed, and there is much crossing out to mark the scribbling away of years and priorities.

David Cameron's blank sheet must have appealed to the Tory party members who voted so overwhelmingly to have him as their leader. They have put their faith in the man who was not there, and have perhaps given themselves a chance after the long years of Conservative doodling while Tony Blair has filled sheet after sheet.

Comparisons have been drawn between Cameron now and Blair then. Yet much more was known about Blair when he rose to lead his party, and he was more experienced than Cameron.

What similarities there are lie in the sense of freshness and newness. It is easy to see the attraction, with the logic running something like this: it worked for that lot so it might do the trick for us. This is the face of the future, before too many lines have been drawn. Tony Blair used to look like that, and now he is greyer, weightier, yet still statesmanlike.

The problem for David now reflects that which once faced Tony. It's not him we have to worry about but his burden, or party as it is known. Like Blair before him, Cameron leads a party that has to change in order to fit the modern age. The Tories need to love Britain "as it is not as it was", as their new leader puts it.

This is all very sensible, but we have heard such words before. Who said the following (and here's a clue, he's from Yorkshire, has no hair to mention but plenty of money, and has acquired wit and charm with middle age)? "I'd like to tell you about a democratic, popular Conservatism that listens, that has compassion at its core. I want to tell you about a changing conservatism that acknowledges its mistakes."

William Hague, of course - and yet he eventually followed the deep grain of his party, trudging back to the right, foolishly saying before the 2001 election that Britain was turning into "a foreign land", something he now regrets.

Perhaps David Cameron will avoid making the same mistake. His becalmed party needs to find the political wind again. A strong Conservative Party - while in itself not something this column is in a rush to see - is an important part of our democratic system. An opposition with its wits about it can only be for the general Parliamentary good.

So we will have to see what David Cameron gets to scrawl on his virgin sheet of paper. As for Tony Blair, he will have to write "the end" sometime or other.

SITTING in the barber's chair last Saturday, I heard a young voice pipe up. I couldn't swear to it, what with scissors snipping and buzzers buzzing, but I think the young lad was asking his dad why you still needed a haircut when you were going bald.

You certainly do, young sir, especially once the mad professor look starts to sprout, with curly bits sticking out at the side and back. As I didn't turn into an academic loon, I'd rather not look like one.

If anything, those of us with diminishing hair need to visit the hairdresser's more often to keep what's left under control. But at £5 a go, it's a bargain.

Perhaps that's a sympathy price, a reduction for what has disappeared, two sparse hairs snipped for the price of one.

Or something like that.

Updated: 11:11 Thursday, December 08, 2005