Unfortunately, the much-touted fact about scientists discovering 19 new types of lice in Bob Marley's dreadlocks after his death are entirely apocryphal.
According to Bob Marley's Rastafarian faith, his dreadlocks should not have come into contact with a razor as long as he lived. But in 2003, it was reported by The Independent that a four-inch strand of Marley's twisted hair was sold at an auction of pop memorabilia for £2,585, double its estimate and a record price for the tresses of a dead musical hero.
The lock was cut off by the Jamaican star and given to a girl he had met after a concert in London in 1980, a year before he died of cancer.
In Rastafarianism, dreadlocks symbolise a devotion to God based on references in the Bible to the holiness of uncut hair. For example, Numbers 6:5 states: "There shall no razor come upon his head until the days are fulfilled ... He shall be holy and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow."
Marley, a convert to the Rasta faith whose albums included Dreadlock Rasta, apparently observed this requirement except on the one occasion he succumbed to the pleas of the fan who kept the hair for 23 years.
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