Songfacts®:

• This is an unusual song and one which mirrors Stewart's later "Old Compton Street Blues." The owner of the pretty golden hair here is surprisingly a young man who moves to the capital where he takes a mundane job of which he soon tires, and although possibly not homosexual he resorts to selling his body to finance a better standard of living. As usual though, it all goes sadly wrong, and as he grows older he moves progressively downmarket and ends up soliciting in public toilets. The song ends with his suicide.
• It may be that unlike "Old Compton Street Blues," Stewart based this on someone he actually knew, though probably not personally. In the song, the boy with golden hair is sent away to boarding school. Stewart was sent to boarding school by his widowed mother, and it may be that he heard this sad tale of an old boy from his contemporaries. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander - London, England, for above 2