A simpering British stylist called Babs -- Minton's hairdresser -- greets Wallace and pushes him into her purple chair, waxing rhapsodic about his virtues as a writer. She stares at him intently. "May I pluck you?" she asks. He's startled. "Just a bit about the eyebrows here, no charge, of course," Babs soothes. Wallace tries to avoid the idea but thanks her for the thought. Babs immediately becomes my hero: "I can make you lovely," she sighs, eliciting a huge guffaw from my corner. Not that I doubt Babs' superior skills -- the woman's clearly a marvel -- but I'm not sure anything short of reconstructive surgery could achieve her lofty goal for Wallace. "Does Danny pluck?" Wallace asks casually, tipping her off that Minton referred him to her salon. Babs demurs, saying all he likes is the color. Babs reveals Danny's a natural redhead who simply hated the childhood nickname "carrot top." Wonder how he feels about the childish comedian. Babs immediately demands a little pluck. Wallace says she can pluck him once, although Babs contends that one pluck is never enough, not from her tweezers. "You're going to like this," she grins, moving in for the pluck. "It won't hurt a bit." Benton flashes back to the night he lost his virginity to that French whore, and all the ointments he had to buy afterward, and braces himself for the worst.