The Lion's Share - Movember 2012!

White rabbits!

A pinch and a punch for the first of the month! No returns.

Whatever first of the month rituals or routines you may hold, in addition hundreds of thousands of men around the world are shaving their faces and preparing for Movember.

Myself included.

Movember began in Australia in 2003, but it's now spread to 21 countries around the world.  For the thirty days of November, the registered Mo Bros will grow, groom, trim and wax their way to a gentlemanly moustache. It's all in the aid of men's health, raising vital funds for care and research, plus raising general awareness for a range of concerns from prostate cancer to mental health.

• 1 in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in the UK – one man is diagnosed every 15 minutes
• A man will die from prostate cancer every hour - more than 10,000 men will die of the disease this year in the UK 
• African Caribbean men are three times more likely to develop prostate cancer
• You are 2.5 times more likely to develop prostate cancer if your father or brother has had it 
• Occurrences of prostate cancer in men are comparable to the rates of breast cancer in women 
• 2,209 men in the UK were diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2009 
• 47% of testicular cancer cases occur in men under 35 years and over 90% occur in men under 55 years

Unlike the nonsense Facebook status memes of recent year, Movember is not exclusively for one gender alone. The campaign acknowledges that these health matters affect the lives of women as much as they do the men, and so ladies are encouraged to support the men in their life - be they family or lovers - by becoming Mo Sistas, spreading the word and fundraising as well.

Last year was their most successful campaign to date with 854,288 Mo Bros and Mo Sistas raising £79.3 million. This year, almost 550,000 participants have registered already, with a full month ahead of us.

This year, I'm doing it. Most of you will now I usually look like this:

But as of this morning, I now have a clean shaven face ready to begin my great Moustache Adventure!

 If you can spare a small donation to sponsor me, it would be greatly appreciated. This can be done here. If anyone out there is also doing Movember, and is doing it solo, come and join our Proud Lion Movember team and pool our efforts!

I'll be posting updates of progress as we go. I'm still deciding on the type of moustache I'm going to grow. I think there maybe an attempt to sport three different ones over the course of Movember!

New Beginnings will return tomorrow, with Matt's review of Wolverine Max #1.

Ben Fardon has a very cold face today.