Re: Autumn issue | Page 16

it would be the other way round. I’m fully aware some of the ladies come up to me and are nervous - you could see beads of sweat forming when they’re in the chair! Who would you say is the most famous person you have met? I can give you a list and you can pick the most famous. There’s Grace Jones, the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Sting, all of Take That, Bryan Ferry, Chris Tarrant to name but a few. I’ve only been starstruck once, when I met The Queen – she wanted me to be her hairdresser – and you can’t really reach much higher than that! I didn’t do it because you’d have to do her hair when she wanted it done and you’d have to go to Australia, Canada and places like that and be at her beck and call. I’m running a business and I just couldn’t have done it. It would have been a lovely thing to do but you know, it’s only a head of hair. When I was telling a few people I had been asked to do it, they said: “Oh, you’d have to change her hair”, and actually you can’t, because every bank note, every stamp would have to change if you think about it. As her PA said: “Look, she’s not a pop star, she’s not a celebrity, she’s an 84-year-old woman who happens to be The Queen of this country and you have to put that into perspective”, so if I changed it, there might have been a backlash. 14 Have you ever created a style that you loved and your client hated? If so, how do you handle that? You, for example; if I say: “Right have you ever had a fringe? Have you ever thought about one?” Yeah. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. A big reputation is what you work to achieve but when you get it, it can work against you. Most people say to me: “Do what you want”. Let me tell you how it really works. Because I’ve got a name, people say: “I’ll leave it to you”. But it’s actually not a case of that at all. In fact, that’s about the worst thing that anyone could say to me. “I’ve thought about it”. “Have you ever had layers?” ”Yeah”. “Did you li