Nicky Clarke interview

If there's a media figure that best sums up this era's obsession with fame and stardom, it's the celebrity hairdresser. Nicky Clarke is in the gossip mags as often as the music and film stars he counts as his clients. It's a level of fame that lets him charge the same amount for a haircut that most people spend on a summer holiday, and command a waiting list that stretches for months and sells out in minutes.

“The new client price for me is £500, but once they've done it once, it goes down to £300.”

But although haircutting might seem a flimsy basis for fame, it's served him well for two decades. When he visited Manchester recently for the launch party of his stylish new salon at Spinningfields, we met him at the Great John Street Hotel to ask about how hairdressing got to be such a big deal, with a big price-tag to match.

He's dressed like a rock star in jeans, a punky t-shirt and wristbands, with his trademark, lion-like mane falling into his eyes. He says even when he cuts it short, people still picture him as having long locks. “It's funny how one look sticks in people's consciousness. It doesn't seem to matter what length I have it – people says it's always long. At my age, I'm just glad it's still on my head.”

It's a look defined by a haircut, which in a sense is the holy grail of the hairdressing world. The 'definitive haircut' is something he's managed to pull off several times in his career. He assisted John Frieda on the purdey in the 1970s, created Selina Scott's look in the 1980s, and Anthea Turner's much imitated, wispy style on GMTV in the 1990s.

Says Nicky, “It's getting more difficult to get iconic looks. Cheryl Cole's is great because it's her – it's not particularly a look. Emma Watson – it's a great look but it's not going to have a million people doing it. When Victoria Beckham has a bob it starts a reaction but people are not quite copying it as it was. So it's starting to get trickier.”

Although there's not a must-have hair-do drawing people in at the moment, his popularity isn't waning. As evidenced by how much he can charge for an appointment.

“The new client price for me is £500, but once they've done it once, it goes down to £300. All I know is I've been fully booked for 35 years.”

Nicky almost manages to convince us that there's a sense of social equality to this. “People can get to me. I don't close the books to people. I don't just do celebrities and shoots. I just set a price on my time and it's probably not for me to judge it.”

Are your clients all very wealthy people who see £500 as not a lot of money?

“A lot of the people coming in to see me aren't rich. They're getting it as a present or a surprise. We have a gift experience where you get everything. It's me, it's a whole bunch of products, it's lunch and champagne. It's the whole thing.

“A lot of those new clients don't think they're coming back again, but many of them do because they see that there is a difference. That's not about the name. The name draws you in first but it won't keep you there unless we come up with the goods.”

Nicky took a break from cutting hair at his Manchester salon a few years back, but he's going to start doing clients up here again four or five times a year. He says the new salon, placed amongst the designer stores at Spinningfields, “Feels much more like what we're about” compared to their previous Manchester home of the Triangle shopping centre.

Manchester being what it is, the celebrities who come to this salon can be divided into two camps: soap stars and footballers, with the footballers' other-halves doubtless filling up an entire bookings sheet of their own.

But you don't have to be rich, or married to a rich person, to afford it. Although they've just closed their £30 offer for Confidential readers, the standard prices aren't particularly alarming. It's between £45-£100 for a cut and finish.

Says Nicky: “When we're in a recession, people concentrate on the core things: skin, teeth, hair. It's what the French and Italians do to create an element of 'quietly confident'.

“It's not about wearing a £2,000 designer dress. That just means the dress looks great – it doesn't necessarily mean you look great. But a haircut is a relatively inexpensive thing that can make you feel really special. Trying to get people to understand that is what I'm about.”