CITY BARBER WHO WAS A CUT ABOVE
Many Derbeians, including Anton Rippon, will have been regular customers at Phil Vidofsky’s barber shop in Abbey Street
PHIL Vidofsky’s barber’s shop in Abbey Street was my unsentimental introduction to a grown-up’s world. Every fortnight in the late 1940s and through the 1950s I was sent there for a trim and dollop of Brylcreem.
It was more than just a place where hair was cut, though. It was a social club where, each day, the same old men would congregate – whether they needed a haircut or not – and gossip with Phil and whoever was in his chair, while his wife kept everyone supplied with huge cups of steaming tea.
I was fascinated watching Phil singe hair with lighted wax tapers, and lather men’s faces before shaving them with a cut-throat razor which he kept sharp by stropping on a leather belt.
While you waited your turn, there were Tom Mix comics to read, men were discreetly asked: “Anything for the weekend, sir?”, and Phil sold Nemo’s football sweep tickets and took illegal bets that he passed on to a bookie’s runner who transferred them to a back-street turf accountant at the top of Wilson Street.
He also chain smoked, lighting one cigarette from another and blowing smoke over you as he snipped away.
My greatest day there came when I was big enough for Phil to dispense with the board that he set across the arms of the barber’s chair for junior clients.
In the mid-1950s, Derby Town Council told Phil that his shop was in the way of Derby’s planned inner ring road. So he left for London.
He returned five years later, opened another hairdresser’s, in Harry Thurman’s old tobacconist’s shop at the junction of Wilson Street and Gerard Street – in a direct line with his old one – ran it for 20 years, and then enjoyed a decent retirement, still waiting for the council to start work on that bit of the inner ring road.
Phil was an East End Jew of Polish descent, born in the Commercial Road. His parents had moved to Derby before the First World War, to live in the Little City, that rabbit warren of narrow streets off Burton
Road, their names – Cannon Street, Trafalgar Street and so on – bearing testament to their origins during the Napoleonic wars.
Phil’s wife, Gladys, was also Jewish, a Cohen by birth. But she was universally known as Bubbles because she’d been the baby of the family.
I caught up with Phil again on a mellow September afternoon in 1979, a few days after he’d retired. “I remember your mother first bringing you in for a haircut when you were about two,” he said.
“It was just after the end of the war. You screamed the place down.”
For the past few years, Phil had been a fervent campaigner for the speedy rehousing of Abbey Street area folk. Now it had caught up with
him personally. Had he any regrets?
“No regrets, but, now it’s here, it’s come as a bit of shock,” he said. “After all, I’ve lived for all but five years of my life in this area. This shop is just a couple of hundred yards from my first home in Derby.”
Phil had learned his trade with a seven-year apprenticeship at Harry Murdock’s shop in Abbey Street before branching out on his own just before the start of the Second World War.
“Harry Mudock gave me one piece of golden advice: ‘You’ll hear everyone else’s trouble and ills.
But never tell ’em your own.’ It’s something that I’ve never forgotten. And the shop’s been more like a club that a business. Bubbles brewed up tea in the back for customers and the atmosphere has been wonderful.
“It’s a dying part of city life, which is a pity, because I honestly feel that we were performing a social service as well as just cutting hair.
“I always set aside a day to visit sick customers and I’ve even lain under a bed at the DRI to cut the hair of a chap which was flat on his back in a plaster cast.
“We used to wax men’s moustaches – that was a big part of the trade – but then that died out, and so too did the old short-backand-sides. Men were coming out of the forces and they wanted to grow their hair longer and forget that horrible army haircut.”
On this early autumn day, he and Bubbles were still living at the Gerard Street premises, but the door was now locked, the “Sorry, We’re Closed” sign turned for the last time. We sat in the now deserted shop. A low sun shone through the window, reflecting off the big mirror that dominated one wall. Scissors and combs were still in their pots, an electric hair-trimmer still plugged in. But there were going to be no more customers. Was he sad?
“Not sad. I’ve enjoyed what I called the bread-and-butter-side of the trade. I’ve met a lot of wonderful people and a lot of interesting characters and, of course, I’m going to miss them. But I hope they’ll still come and see us when we move.”
Phil and Bubbles enjoyed a happy retirement in Churchside Walk, in the shadow of St Luke’s Church, although it should have been longer.
Phil was 78 when he died in July 1990. Bubbles died three years later. I doubt that we shall see their like again.