The world is starting to look a lot like a horror story - and perched atop
the totems of power are the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

It becomes harder to determine what makes them more terrifying; their narcissism or curious quiffs.

When observing the state of world leaders and their looks, one can't help but wonder: does having a bad hairstyle make you more likely to
become some kind of dictator?

To answer this question, one would have to look at the most charismatic scoundrel of them all first.

One would be forgiven to think that it would be the architect of the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler. But it was not until a colleague pointed out that comb-overs are a great way to hide the many nightmares of the scalp.

Statistically speaking, the history books point a finger at China's Mao Zedong, whose receding hairline was perhaps reflective of the number of people whose deaths he was responsible for. Mao was leader of the Communist Party of China from the early '40s to the late '70s.

During this time Mao sought to industrialise China through the Great Leap Forward, an initiative that would turn China into a premier exporter of steel often forcefully manufactured in the backyards of citizens.

This tyrannical rule saw 20-million people die of hunger because they had to use tools meant for common purposes to produce steel.

One of his other shocking ideologies was the 100 flowers movement which allowed citizens the opportunity to share with Mao how he should best govern little old China.

Those who were eager enough equated to about 500,000 and yes, we know the estimate because they were all killed for thoughts that were a danger to Mao.

Mao had always communicated his state of mind through his hair.

At a young age he abandoned his noble queue (a Chinese ponytail similar to the pigtail Cassper Nyovest wore circa Doc Shebeleza fame) to show allegiance to Emperor Pu Yi's absolute monarchy. By the time he discovered the curtained hairstyle (think Leonardo DiCaprio in the '90s) over the years, the Western cut mirrored his love for communism.

To a shocking extreme, the cutting of his queue was similar to his demand for the eradication of Chinese traditions and culture a la his DiCaprio locks. It's no wonder his stylist was interviewed sharing views that Mao's hair was so disastrous he often had to cut his sideburns to give his hair an asymmetrical illusion.

While Trump has held a crown of admirable yuppie glory, this did not stop a bug from literally walking out of his now iconically terrifying tresses.

Donald's British doppelganger might not have any bugs about, but Boris's chopped and screwed bangs have always been a bundle too miserable for any hairstylist to auto-tune into anything resembling beauty.

Common traits of bad hair, from treacherous hairlines to patches in denial, seem to stem from questionable leaders as extreme as Idi Amin to uBaba ka Duduzane. Throughout many cultures, hair was a means of communicating availability, pride, status - and even fertility.

Stress and anxiety are closely linked to the hair losses we see in many of our terrible leaders, just about the only commonality that can birth the narcissism in a psychopath of many tyrants of past and present.

Psychologically speaking, it is likely that men in places of power would suffer the anxieties of being overthrown. In hiding the paranoia behind fears of an uprising, it would be no surprise that the first symptom of their narcissistic madness would be a flailing crown of hair.

Can we believe the healthy mops on Nelson Mandela or Barack Obama are anything to go by or are the greatest evils of the world those who have a good coiffeur on speed dial?

What lies in the coils of our greatest leaders and what secrets can a brilliant barber tell?