I don't think I'm giving away any state secrets when I tell you Mother has dyed her hair since she was 13. She spent an entire week with her head wrapped in a towel, pretending to her father that she had just washed her hair when she first bleached her locks. Ever since, she has embraced all chemical variations of ash, honey, Scandic and toffee that the beauty industry has to offer.

Over the years, she has been golden, platinum, dazzling moonlight, and even – in one brief and unsatisfactory phase – "natural" blonde. She did indeed spend the 60s as a "golden-locked, gold-digging faker", as Ewan put it. Her love affair with the bottle has gone on for so long that she no longer has any idea what her given hair colour is – even her eyebrows wouldn't give Ewan a clue. She has long been wise to those little traps.

But he's right about the assumptions. When I first dyed my hair, my English teacher, Ms Wrapson, told me that it was an air-headed move and it was doubtless the first step on a path to a sluttish future. Admittedly, she wasn't entirely wrong.

I used a cheap kit and my attempts at sun-kissed streaks made me look like a skunk that had been caught in an electric fence. But I am not one to be easily deterred and tried again. An entire head of platinum hair can look arresting, I found, but if you are a little sun-deprived Celt, you look like a stunted albino.

Again, I moved on, thinking that maybe blonde wasn't for me. I tried black instead. That lasted a whole day and a half – 36 hours of complete strangers asking me if I felt all right. Would I like them to get me some water?

Then came the years of enduring the cap and the crochet hook. There's suffering for beauty and then there's salon highlights. There really is only so long that a girl can cope with that amount of pain - or hair loss. Mr Turner often complains that he married a wee blonde raver (his words) and he seems to have ended up with me. But I ain't going back to the cap, no siree.

The colour I've settled on is more flattering to my pasty, pallid Scottish complexion. Some may call it Ginga Ninja. Some may call it carrot top. I prefer to call it Natural Bright Auburn. At least, that's what it says on the box. In fact, it looks so natural that my sister-in-law's mother hoped her grandchildren would have my hair colour.

The real benefit of red hair is that people let you away with murder. Any stropping, stamping, swearing and slamming of doors is generally excused by that whole "fiery nature" thing. It's great. Who wouldn't join up to that? Blondes are the same. They get doors opened for them, heavy bags carried for them and never have to do anything too taxing if they don't want to. Oh yeah, they're dumb all right.

And if Ewan would like to call Mother stupid, then he's either ridiculously brave – or dangerously stupid himself.