Federal Correctional Institution Englewood

Federal Correctional Institution Englewood, It may be hard to imagine Rod Blagojevich looking anything but boyish in his trademark dark, helmet hair. But his longtime barber said Wednesday that the former Illinois governor has been dyeing his hair for years and now that he is in prison – where dyes are banned – it will soon turn gray.

Peter Vodovoz, Blagojevich’s Chicago-area barber for two decades, told The Associated Press the 55-year-old has dyed his hair himself, but with no dye available at his lockup, the last color masking his gray will fade within three months.

“His hair will turn gray, like Jay Leno’s,” Vodovoz said, speaking a week after Blagojevich entered a federal prison outside Denver to serve his sentence on corruption charges.

Hair dyes are strictly banned in the Federal Correctional Institution Englewood because inmates could use them to disguise their appearance in attempted escapes, prison spokesman John Sell said.

Vodovoz, who last cut Blagojevich’s hair a month ago, offered his prison-bound client advice he may have difficulty taking: He told him not to fret about his hair behind bars because no cameras will be around to document his changed appearance.

“‘There’s no media, so don’t worry,’ I told him,” he said. “Who’s going to care?”

The two-term governor was closely identified with and parodied for his thick helmet of hair. A comedian on Saturday Night Live once joked that when FBI agents came to arrest him in 2008, Blagojevich asked for five minutes to pack his things – and for eight hours to comb his hair.