'It's expensive!': Karl Stefanovic seemingly addresses hair transplant rumours

Karl Stefanovic’s TV show This Time Next Year is all about transformations and it appears that the host may have undergone one himself.

In the season finale on Monday night the 45-year-old seemingly addressed persistent rumours that he’s had some sort of treatment - thought to be a hair transplant - in order to manage his suspected baldness.

The former Today anchor may have let the cat out of the bag when he retreated to a safe distance before a contestant on the show lit a fire on set.

Karl’s ‘expensive’ hair

Mother-of-two Paula Williams made her dramatic return to the show following a breast reduction that saw her “uncomfortable” H-cup breasts reduced to a more manageable D.

Paula was so pleased with the results that she wanted to burn her old bras on TV which prompted Karl to go into protective mode about his locks.

“If you don't mind, I'm going to step back,” he announced.

“I don't want to burn my hair and stuff. Do you know what I mean? It's expensive!” he added.

While it’s unclear what Karl was referring to with the ‘expensive’ comment, it could be a pricey haircut - or an exxy hair transplant.

Indeed, the procedure doesn’t come cheap at $11,000 to $18,000 according to a Choice report from 2015.

‘He has hair plugs!”: Richard Reid reveals all

Rumours of Karl’s supposed hairy problem have been chasing the father-of-three for several years, with celebrity gossip king Richard Reid making an explosive revelation about his ‘do in an episode of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in early 2019.

While speaking with former Gogglebox star and soon-to-be Bachelorette Angie Kent, the ex-entertainment reporter, who had worked on the Today show for seven years, recalled a time he was getting ready backstage.

“So I go into the hair room, and this guy looks up and he’s kinda like balding – it was Karl Stefanovic without his spray-on hair!” he revealed.

“He has spray-on hair?” a shocked Angie asked.

“Yep and then he went away and got hair plugs,” Richard added.

“He had one of those six-week vacations and came back with [gestures to his hair]. And he still used the spray until it filled in,” he said.

Prior to Richard’s bombshell, Sydney Morning Herald reported in 2017 that the twice-married TV personality wanted to ‘maintain his beloved looks’ by getting a ‘subtle’ hair transplant to hide any thinning.

What is a hair transplant?

Hair-transplant surgery has come along way in the last two decades since the obvious ‘80s ‘hair plugs’ that gave the procedure a bad name.

Today, a person’s own individual hair follicles are implanted into the crown and temples by a surgeon who cuts a strip of scalp from the side or back of the head or removed the follicles by hand.

People with hair loss due to inflammation or injury to the scalp or certain inflammatory diseases such as lupus can benefit from the procedure.

In Australia, however, most people who undergo hair transplants are men who want to curb male pattern baldness.

Male pattern baldness or ‘androgenetic alopecia’ affects over half of men by the age of 50, but it can begin as early as teenage years.

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