A couple of weeks ago, we brought you the news that Cambridge MP Julian Huppert had made the shortlist for Parliamentary Beard of the Year, a competition organised by The Beard Liberation Front. That’s an organisation that has always struck me as weird. If you liberate a beard, aren’t you left with a clean shaven face? Oh well, never mind.

Today it was announced that our Julian has won with 46% of the vote with Jeremy Corbyn coming in second place and another Liberal Democrat MP, John Thurso, coming third.

And he celebrated in style, inventing the hashtag of the year in the process.

Honoured to be voted as Parliamentary Beard of the year. Thanks all! http://t.co/41oyy0zMd7 @kmflett #fb #winninghair

— Julian Huppert (@julianhuppert) December 14, 2013

That is clever.

Keith Flett, who organised the competition, said of Julian’s victory:

Julian Huppert’s victory underlines that the LibDems can still win something and perhaps the fact that it was the Parliamentary Beard Award suggests that a return to their traditional hirsute image could be a way forward. That aside Jeremy Corbyn underlined his role as the Parliamentary standard bearer for hirsute causes.

A great result for our contenders, though. Well done to Julian and John Thurso for ensuring that Liberal Democrats have a bearded presence across the whole land.

Anyone who follows Jennie Rigg on Twitter  will know that she has a bit of a fascination with beards. So it stands to reason that she’s quite excited by today’s result and has news of a bit of a scrap between Labour and her local gingery beardy candidate, Alisdair Calder McGregor.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings