No jokes, please, about Mr. T.'s haristylist having a sense of humour. This is Mr. T. He likes his hair just the way it is; and, with his physique, it doesn't do to argue.

He's 5ft 11in tall, weighs nearly 16st, and as Baracus, the mean muscleman with "The A-team", on ITV, mr. T. has suddenly found himself in the enviable position of being the most watched Friday night adventurer on British television.

Once a very effective nightclub bouncer and bulging bodyguard to people such as Muhammed Ali, T., as his friends call him, first featured prominently in the film "Rocky III". Sylvester Stallone had seen him playing catch with a stuntman for a televised 'toughest bouncer' contest. He cast him as a vicious opponent for the soft-hearted boxer Rocky, with the advise: 'Just be yourself'.

This suited Mr. T. to a ... Anyway, he is happier playing himself. 'I didn't take any acting lessons. There's no difference between Baracus and T., and there hasn't been a mean guy on the screen like me. I'm not a killer, I have a different mystique.

Mr. T. is black and rich. He's risen from the Chicago slums, where his mother raised a family of 12 single-handed. You wouldn't think it to see him now, but T. survived his childhood on one meal a day. Now he eats plentifully, and spends more time in the jeweller's shop than the supermarket.

It takes T. an hour each day to put on his trinkets: 90 chains, seven earrings, 14 ankle chains and 10 rings. 'These chains are not a luxury to me. They symbolise the slavery of my ancestors from Africa. The idea is I'm still a slave, but I'm a higher-priced slave.'

The End