Normally I’m up to trying just about anything when it comes to shaving. But when my English pal Andy who lives just outside Llandewi Breffi and is the only wetshaver in his village raved about the new King Of Shaves brushless shaving gel, I have to admit that my unconditional willingness to try anything Andy says rocks (he is, after all, the Father of the Featherjector, the King of Shavers, the miracle that is a vintage Schick Injector razor loaded with a clipped-down Feather disposable straight razor blade) was offset by the fact that I hate shaving goo.

The whole wetshaving trip — 100 years of tradition, every manufacturer and dealer of safety razors and old-school creams and badger shaving brushes, this blog — it all stands for something, and that something is YOU DON’T HAVE TO USE GOO WHEN YOU SHAVE.

I used goo for years. Cheap, came in cans. Didn’t care what kind of goo it was, just gimme that goo. I’d squirt a stream of that translucent orange jizz in my palm and watch it turn white and foamy around the edges as the air got to it. Spread it on my dry puss and scraped a blue plastic disposable hither and yon till I bled equally on all quadrants, and that was my morning shave circa most of my life.

Most newly converted wetshavers blame their old razors for the lousy shaves they got before they wised up. I blame the goo. Because if you just swap some good English shaving cream for that goo and change nothing else about the rest of your rig, you’ll get a vastly better shave. But use the very best safety razor in the world and drag it across a layer of goo on your face, and you’ll be very, very sorry. The goo is the linchpin, or linchgoo, of the entire shaving experience.

King Of Shaves is a UK company specializing in shaving goo in stand-up plastic tubes. The company does a lot of promotional marketing featuring master barbers chosen for their shaving skills, and you’ve probably seen their tubes of goo in the men’s shaving section of your local pharmacy, next to the Adidas deodorant and the Michael Jordan aftershave — you know, the quality stuff. The stuff used by guys with glossy hair who work in cubicles and dream of making the O face someday.

I’ve never had even the slightest interest in trying any KOS goo, because to me, goo inna tube is no higher on the food chain than goo inna can. But Andy said this KOS goo called Alphaglide ALS (for Advanced Lubrication System, not Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease) was different. Newer, better, faster, stronger, more advanced, filled with tiny micro-ball-bearings of lubricating goodness that set it apart from all other goo.

Ah, but the Alphaglide ALS isn’t available in the US, I told Andy. Dodged that bullet!

“No problem, mate,” he didn’t say (I put that in there to remind you he’s British), “I’ll mail you some!” And so it was that a few weeks later I had a tube of this orange goo in my hand, and an enthusiastic fellow shavegeek on the other side of the pond waiting for me to try it.

I hemmed and hawed and avoided it the best I could. I made excuses to myself for not trying it — a new razor I had to try first, or the Swedish Gillette DE blades, or a new brush, or that Spanish Leather shaving cream concoction I whipped up. Anything to forestall the shave I knew I had to catch sooner or later with a layer of this orange goo on my face.

I finally ran out of excuses today. So instead of lathering my wet face up with a nicely scented English cream and my favorite badger brush, I flipped the KOS’s plastic fliptop up and squeezed a splooge of Alphaglide into my hand.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Kind of a minty toothpaste scent, with tea tree oil mixed in there as well. And sure enough, the Alphaglide ALS has tea tree oil, as well as aloe vera, vitamin E, and something they call Lubrinyl-12, which sounds like a sperminator but is actually just a lubricant which KOS says “behaves like a micro-thin layer of ball bearings on the skin which converts the high drag sliding friction (seen in regular shave gels) into smooth rolling friction that virtually eliminates razor drag and gives optimum razor glide”.

Andy said to really rub the Alphaglide goo into my skin to activate the little Lubrinyl-12 ball bearings, so I rubbed and I rubbed, but I’ll have to take it on faith that I accomplished anything because the KOS goo didn’t lather up one iota. It just spread around my face, translucent and gooey, without any state change at all. I didn’t try using a brush because frankly, I didn’t want to get any orange toothpaste-smelling goo on it. I just followed Andy’s and King of Shaves’s directions and then I shaved.

I used my Gillette Super Speed DE and a Swedish Gillette blade on its 5th shave. I’d like to take a moment here and thank Andy for turning the shavegeek community onto these excellent DE blades, because he’s the one who first hipped me and Gordon and everyone else onto these. That’s another notch on your strop, Andy — keep ‘em coming!

Back to the goo. The shave was weird. The goo was slick beyond compare — this is easily the slickest, most slippery shaving stuff I’ve tried to date, slicker even than the amazing Cremo Cream — but there was very little feedback from the razor as it slid across my skin. With regular creams and hard shaving soaps, I can feel and hear the difference when my razor is cutting whiskers and when it’s going over cleanly shaved skin. Not with the Alphaglide. It felt for all the world like I’d forgotten to put a blade in the razor.

Nothing at all about the shave was pleasurable. The smell was a cross between Crest and tea tree oil, the translucent orange goo was, well, translucent orange goo, and the shave itself gave no clues that anything at all was getting done. All told, it was the least pleasurable shave I’ve had since I switched to wetshaving.

So how come the shave was so brilliant?!

C’mon, you saw this one coming. As much as I disliked its smell, physical appearance, brushless application, and lack of sensory feedback, the shave I got from the Alphaglide ALS was world-class. As good as any cream I normally use. It makes no sense, but there it is. This Alphaglide goo shaves like a madman! I hate to admit it, because I’m loathe to praise goo, but — god, can I even choke out the words?

This is good goo.

Now the question is, should you run out and get some? Ah, here’s where it gets interesting. Because you can’t. Not yet, at least. For some reason, King Of Shaves isn’t selling this stuff in the US yet. You can’t even order it on their website. The only way to score a tube of this stuff is to have a pal in the UK mail it to you.

But do you want him to, is my question. Look, I’ll try anything Andy sends me — the bloke knows his stuff. But to my way of thinking, the Alphaglide will only be of interest to a guy who:

1. Hates using a brush (which to me is the best part of wetshaving);

2. Doesn’t mind the smell of toothpaste and tea tree oil wafting into his nostrils for 5-10 mins;

3. Doesn’t mind that he’s got a layer of translucent orange goo on his face.

I know lots of guys have very sensitive skin and can’t use soaps without issues, so for them, this KOS goo would be a good alternative to the heavily soaped-up English creams. It does shave like a demon, just as Andy said it did, and it’s got lots of aloe vera, tea tree oil, and vitamin E to make sensitive skin happier. So for guys in this boat, the Alphaglide ALS could be just the ticket.

I don’t know when or if King Of Shaves will bring this Alphaglide ALS goo to US shelves. if they do, they might consider changing the name to something that doesn’t share its initials with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, though. Just a thought.

Will I use it again? Um, well, you see….

No really, I’ll probably give it a go again someday. I didn’t like the scent, but the shave is fantastic, and I’m a sucker for pragmatic performance. I don’t like the pina colada scent of Cremo Cream either, but I keep a tube of it handy at all times because it’s miraculous stuff and I like to use it every once in awhile. It’ll be the same with the KOS goo. Actually, Beloved Wife may be giving this a try shortly on her gams, and if that happens then I may never see this tube of goo again. It seems like the perfect gam goo for gals.

And speaking of gals and goo, do you hear that strange whirring sound? It’s the grave of Sir Winston Churchill, spinning at 78 RPMs over the first shaving cream ever to come from San Francisco’s Castro district, otherwise known as the Gayest Place On Earth. I’ll tell you nancy boys all about it tomorrow.