Ever wanted to know what an earlier edition of Tommy Koh looked like, when he was young?

Deep into the circuit breaker period, as more people are getting bored and bothered, the veteran diplomat and Ambassador-at-Large acceded to requests from three of his friends to "post a photo of a younger me".

Koh obliged eventually:

According to Koh, this was taken when he was in his forties, in either 1981 or 1982.

With his trademark square-framed glasses and Beatle-esque haircut, Koh looked like he exited the Flower Power era and entered straight onto the world stage.

At the time, he was serving as the President of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, and was speaking at a press conference at the UN in New York.

The sharing of the photo on Facebook prompted some anecdotes from people who had met Koh back in the day, before his hair had greyed.

It also resulted in an amusing exchange between Koh and a commenter about the length of his hair.

In the 1960s, when hippie culture was at its height, the austere Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP launched a government campaign against cultural elements that were deemed a bad influence, including long hair.

This campaign only began to relax in the 1980s.

And it seems that Koh's dashing 'do didn't escape the notice of at least one observer.

Big diplomat energy.

Top image from Tommy Koh's Facebook page.