Tony Blair’s bad hair day The PM should have praised the genius of hairdressers

In 1997, newly elected Tony Blair declared that he aimed to deliver a university education to over 50 per cent of schoolleavers. He didn’t want anyone to feel they had to ‘settle for being a hairdresser’.

‘What on earth is wrong with being a hairdresser!?’ raged my intellectual friend Anne. ‘Hairdressers can double as psychotherapists and it can be an incredibly well-paid job.’

I think of her words each time I visit my own good-vibes-emitting local hairdresser Serena. I reflect on her trajectory from unmotivated teenager who left school at 16 to prosperous salon-owner by the age of 30.

Serena was amazed when her mother told her, the day after school ended, that she couldn’t just sit around at home and she needed to get a job – any job.

But it was the days when people obeyed their parents and so, faute de mieux, Serena, who had no interest in hairdressing, sulkily agreed to take up a trainee position her mother had found for her in a salon in Marlborough High Street.

The cool and trendy environment piqued her interest. Naturally intuitive Serena learned how to snip, style and colour. She acquired that indefinable skill of being able to tune into each customer and deliver just the amount of chat they wanted.

Serena worked so hard that when one of her cool colleagues left to open her own salon, she asked Serena to come with her.

And when after a couple of years that cool colleague went freelance, Serena, undeterred, rented a chair in another trendy salon and built up a following.

One day, an estate-agent customer announced that she was representing the owner of a run-down cottage in an unglamorous village, and was having difficulty selling it because it was next door to a noisy pub. She said, ‘Serena, that would make an ideal salon for you.’

Serena says, ‘The thing is – it was affordable because it was an unglamorous village and it was the days when you had to put down only a small deposit.’

The location turned out to be irrelevant, because Serena’s personal popularity meant her clients followed her. I calculate she makes a six-figure income after mortgage, services and product costs, and the salary of her assistant.

Her success is linked to the fact that she’s never in a bad mood. Why would she be? She has the life of Riley and enjoys the work. Demand is so great that she can filter her customer list to admit only those she gets along with.

A key thing, she says, is ‘You have to be reliable, Mary. You can’t let people down. If you have made them an appointment, then you have to be there for them.’

I don’t use her as a therapist. I am usually too busy catching up with reading while she tweaks me in her haven. But others spare themselves the cost of psychotherapy as they gush forth.

‘You can tell your hairdresser things you don’t want to tell your best friend,’ Serena says.

But, she adds, ‘You mustn’t become complacent. You always have to ask, “Do you fancy a change?” Because some customers will leave their hairdresser because they are too embarrassed to say they want to try a different look. So you mustn’t assume they want the same thing each time.’

For a third of the price of a top London salon – with the same results – Serena delivers a five-star provincial service.

The fact that the business is manageably sized is key. Friends continually urge her to open more salons to follow the winning formula, but she prefers to remain in charge of just one successful salon: ‘Mary, I have no reason to add more stress to my life by running a bigger business.’

Sadly, she can’t now find any apprentices to be inspired by her story and ambition. She says, ‘It’s been the hardest time in 20 years to recruit apprentices. People have changed since Covid – they don’t seem to have any energy or ambition and they have quite bad entitlement syndrome.

‘That said, it takes two years to train and the minimum wage is – what, £5 an hour? No one can afford to do it. You can get £13 an hour stacking shelves at Lidl.’

It’s the same story in China. In a bid for tech supremacy, the leaders have encountered resistance in a generation of young Chinese who balk at the Party’s high-minded calls for ‘continued struggle’. They opt instead for ‘lying flat’, or tang ping. They got a taste of freedom during lockdown and it dawned on them that they did not want to work the rest of their lives away.

Meanwhile, we hope that Tony has had time to eat his words on hairdressing – not least since his son Euan has made a fortune with his company, Multiverse, promoting apprenticeships for non-graduates.