Urban Myths: Has Demi Moore had a mohican haircut?

Film fans, hairdressers and fashion victims gasped and cooed when this striking image appeared on Twitter this summer. Had Demi Moore really shaved her lovely dark locks off, except for a ridiculous central tuft? The picture was posted on the social-networking site by none other than Moore’s husband, the actor Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher, who is

15 years younger than his wife of four years, appears to spend an inordinate amount of time on Twitter, and earlier this year posted a picture of Moore’s knicker-clad bottom on the website. That picture was apparently real and unenhanced, but this haircut shot was clearly the result of the little lad indulging in some digital trickery. Commentators suggested that he find more acting work to fill his valuable time. Following the post, a friendly matrimonial exchange of tweets offered a fascinating insight into this celebrity relationship. Apparently averse to the use of commas, Kutcher tweeted: ‘Just playing baby but I think you’d look great with that cut.’ Moore replied: ‘Thank you love. How ’bout I shave your initials into my head.’ Saucy Kutcher responded: ‘You could shave them somewhere other than your head’.

Under Cover: The artist who inspired a colourful character

In his novel The Moon and Sixpence, W Somerset Maugham paints a vivid picture of Charles Strickland, who leaves his comfortable life to become an artist, and ends up painting richly coloured canvases of nude women in Tahiti. The story is immediately familiar to art-lovers as that of the post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. It is no wonder that the 1919 novel was so faithful to the artist’s real life: Maugham visited Tahiti in 1917 and collected stories about Gauguin, who had died 14 years before. Like Gauguin, Strickland works as a stockbroker, but abandons his wife and children to dedicate himself to art. Strickland’s difficult relationship with a Dutch artist is reminiscent of Gauguin’s stormy friendship with Vincent Van Gogh — whose famous ear, it has recently been claimed, was cut off in a fight with Gauguin rather than by Van Gogh himself. Like Gauguin, Strickland is a bad-tempered man who makes enemies easily, and it can’t help that he drinks glass after glass of absinthe. Gauguin too was a fan of the notorious spirit, admitting in a letter:

“I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world.” The narrator of Maugham’s novel notes that “convention had no hold” on Strickland, and after Gauguin settled in Tahiti in the 1890s he said he had “escaped everything that is artificial and conventional”. Gauguin never painted a canvas called The Moon and Sixpence, but he did paint one in 1893 called The Moon and the Earth. He also produced a watercolour called Mango Tree, and it is under a mango tree that Strickland is buried in the novel. But Gauguin isn’t buried in Tahiti: he left the island in 1897 and settled in the remote Marquesas Islands, where he died in 1903. In the book, Strickland’s last great work of art — “a hymn to the beauty of the human form” — is destroyed by fire in accordance with his final wishes. Some of Gauguin’s paintings, considered obscene by the authorities, also went up in smoke after his death. Gauguin’s eye-popping art can be enjoyed next year in a grand exhibition at Tate Modern in London.

Unsung Hero: The inventor who gave divers a big helping hand

Dr Hugh Bradner was a physicist who helped to develop the atomic bomb. But he was also a keen diver, and he knew how hard it was to stay in cold water for long periods. Experimenting in the basement of his California home in the early 1950s, Bradner discovered that a suit made from neoprene could trap a layer of water around the body; this would heat up to body temperature and keep the cold at bay. We know his invention today as the wetsuit. However, Bradner’s attempts to sell the suit were not successful, and his patent application failed on a technicality. The scientist known to friends as “Brad” died last year, aged 92.

Times recommends

• Think yourself slim with our hypnodiet podcast
• Why British children are pushed too hard
• So, what really makes you happy?