CRAIG BROWN: Why silence is always golden at the barbers

During a visit to the hairdresser, the late Enoch Powell, never the most intimate of personalities, was asked how he would like his hair cut.

“In silence,” was his answer.

I thought of Mr Powell when I heard the news that a hairdresser in Finland has launched a ‘quiet service’ for those who prefer a little silence.

Kati Hakomeri, who runs her own salon in Helsinki, has little time for small talk, big talk or any other conversation.

Neither do her clients: many cannot think of anything new from visit to visit. “If nothing new has happened in life during that time, why talk about it?” she says.

Kati Hakomeri has introduced the special booking for customers who prefer not to make polite small talk about their future holiday, weekend plans or the weather

I’m with the silent brigade. If I were a Finn, I would go straight to Mrs. Hakomeri’s salon. I’m always afraid that hairdressers will say, ‘Are we going somewhere nice this summer?’ or “Crikey, where did you get this cut last?”

That’s why I always go to a hairdresser who has his radio permanently tuned to noisy discussions about football.

WS Gilbert, the Gilbert and Sullivan copywriter, is also said to have welcomed Ms. Hakomeri’s venture. When his talkative barber asked him, “When can we expect anything more, Mr. Gilbert, from your flowing pen?”

Gilbert snapped back, “What do you mean, sir, my flowing pen? There is no such thing as a smooth pen. A pen is an insensitive object. I don’t presume to inquire into your private affairs. You will please exercise the same restraint toward mine.”

Of course there are plenty of people who like to have a chat with their hairdresser. In her memoirs, Hitler’s secretary, Christa Schröder, recalled that his girlfriend, Eva Braun, once complained to her hairdresser that Adolf “had never had sexual intercourse with her.”

Presumably it was the same hairdresser who passed this favorite gossip topic on to Schroeder, who many years later passed it on to the general reader.

Never tell your hairdresser a secret: this was one of the many life lessons Eva Braun didn’t learn.

Hakomeri also seems to be on to something, telling a local newspaper that there appears to be a gap in the market for the special booking option. In the photo: Hakomeri’s salon

Hitler’s personal hairdresser believed that the Führer’s hair clippings might be worth keeping. With this in mind, he collected them discreetly by putting tape on the soles of his shoes.

Since the days of Sweeney Todd, barbershops have been an uneasy mix of calm and tension. Some find them relaxing; but others find them tense, perhaps because they view them as the setting for machine gun massacres in gangster films.

One minute you’re sitting back with a white sheet around your neck and your face covered in shaving cream, the next minute you’re lying flat on the floor, riddled with bullet holes.

And hairdressers themselves can be unreliable. A while ago, a new suspect for the Jack the Ripper murders was discovered: a hairdresser named Aaron Kosminski, better known as Jack the Snipper.

In my experience, even the calmest hairdressers offer the basic pleasantries, asking you if the water is too hot and at the end showing you your new hairstyle with a hand mirror before removing the hair clippings from your collar with a nice brush.

But that wasn’t always the case. When I’m in London, I often pass a barbershop on Marchmont Street with a plaque on the wall stating that this was where Carry On actor Kenneth Williams once lived.

His father was a barber who hated fancy haircuts and only offered the traditional short back and sides.

Kenneth recalled a man coming into the store and asking for a clap wave. “You won’t get any blow waves from me!” burst out Mr Williams senior.

One mystery remains. Why are so many hairdressers addicted to puns? Such as the British salons Curl Up And Dye, Shear Excitement, From Hair To Eternity and Love My Do. Another reason to book my next appointment in Helsinki.

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