Honestly I don’t give his girlfriend a second thought. She was just one of the salon’s juniors, and I don’t get involved with juniors
practical. ‘Look at the size of it!’ she says, gesturing round the ballroom-sized drawing room with its white grand piano (once owned by Neil Sedaka), sprawling sofas and carefully edited antiques.
‘It’s just me here and it’s too much. I very seldom even use this room. So I want a smaller house on just two levels, with an annexe where my elderly mum and dad can come and stay.
‘Perhaps a manor house in Essex with a beautiful walled garden, in a village with a pub and church with a church hall where I could go to yoga classes.’ ‘You’d go to yoga in a church hall?’ ‘Why not?’ she laughs. ‘I like simple pleasures. These are just trappings.’
Lesley also wants to be close to Harrison, who works in corporate finance — and is dad to Casper, three and one-year- old Felix — and is about to up sticks and move with wife Rhian to rural Essex. Meanwhile, daughter Tellisa, a banker, had her June wedding postponed by Covid.
‘ But she’s virtually planned when she’s having a baby on a spreadsheet and she’ll come and live with me for a year when it’s born. So I thought: “I hardly ever go out in London so what’s the point in staying here?” I’m ready for the next stage of my life.’
But there won’t be any diminution of her role in the business, which has garnered a veritable Who’s Who of clients over the years including Elizabeth Taylor, Kate Moss, Brad Pitt, Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher.
Nicky, who commands around £600 for a haircut, works two or three days a week now, but Lesley, at an age when most women are dialling down, is ramping up.
She remains a powerhouse of energy, elegant and youthful; her post-lockdown hair a glorious confection of honeyed blonde and chestnut.
‘After lockdown I had that much grey,’ she cries, indicating a swathe the size of a hand-span. ‘I asked my stylist, Tito, if I should go completely grey and he said, “Don’t be ridiculous! You’re not an old woman. You’d hate it”.’
Lesley’s responsibilities as CEO include everything from liaising with salon managers to controlling finances and accounts, plus overseeing packaging, design and sales of the Nicky Clarke range of styling tools.
‘And I’m the one dealing with the Covid crisis because I’m more equipped to do so than Nicky. He’s a hairdresser!’ she cries.
‘I was in the Mayfair salon at midnight the day before we reopened, sticking social distancing notices on the floor. Nicky was there videoing me so the staff could see how it’s done.’
If all that were not enough, she has just launched her own brand of paraben-and-sulphate free hair products, Azure by Planet Friendly Beauty, formulated to be gentle to sensitive scalps like her own. The packaging is plastic-free, too.
‘It’s my first foray into my own products,’ she says. ‘It’s nerveracking! Nicky’s endorsing them. But he’d be honest with me if they were rubbish and wouldn’t have staked his reputation on them if he didn’t rate them.’
One thing is eminently clear. She and Nicky share not only a mutual fondness, but a respect for each other. ‘I care a lot about him and want him to be happy,’ she says, confiding that he came to her
when, two years ago, he discovered he had thyroid cancer. ‘I was one of the first people he told,’ she says. ‘He came to see me and said, “I have some bad news. I have a thyroid problem and they’ve done a biopsy. There’s a tiny amount of cancer there”.
‘My heart went out to him, of course — I’ve known him for 39 years, and he’s my children’s father. But he took it all in his stride. They cut the cancer out and I don’t think he even needed radiotherapy, just some medication.’ Nicky also broke both hands when he fell off his scooter the same year, but Lesley quashes the rumour that his magic mitts are insured for £1 million. ‘They’re not. We’ve had some kind of insurance for years but not specifically for his hands,’ she says.
‘He couldn’t cut hair when they were in plaster and I don’t think he drives a scooter any more. I saw him cycling past the house the other day so I guess he now rides a bicycle.
‘At least he has the decency to wear normal clothes. He’s not a Lycra lout. Stupid men! Where do they think they are? On the Tour de France?’
She concedes that the perennially boyish Nicky looks youthful for his age: ‘And he hasn’t had any work done. He’s got a good head of hair and he dyes it. I’ve only ever known him as blond, but he’s a redhead really. And I imagine he tints his eyebrows because they’re really very fair.’
Of her own beauty regimen, she says she is full of good intentions that rarely materialise: ‘I’m the laziest person. I don’t have any skincare secrets!’ she cries.
‘Actually all I use is rosacea cream (to combat redness.)’ Her skin looks flawless from where I’m sitting, but intervention has been minimal, she insists. ‘I had a bit of Botox and filler for Harrison’s wedding but it wasn’t a success. I felt a bit weird.
‘I got a really bad headache after the Botox. I don’t think I’ll do it again. I’d like a tummy tuck but my kids would kill me if I had a general anaesthetic at my age. It’s not wise.’
Ah, the passing years. Nicky, who had a series of relationships after he and Lesley separated, seems to have settled into domesticity with Kelly — they have been together for 11 years. If Lesley is surprised by the longevity of the relationship she isn’t saying.
‘Nicky was quite ill a few years ago with a cyst on his liver and the children and I were very worried. I think illness makes you reassess your life,’ is how she explains it.
‘Four years ago I was in hospital for 21 days with pneumonia and heart problems. After that I made sure I only do things I want to do. I don’t go to many functions any more. I’ve become a bit reclusive.
‘You evolve and change, don’t you? I’ve calmed down. In the evening I like to stay in, cook, do some dressmaking; watch TV.
‘Covid has made us all reassess our lives, as well. And it’s taught us we’re not invincible.’
THE pandemic has also had a huge impact on trade in their London salon. ‘It’s dropped by 60 per cent, which is scary. It isn’t just us. Restaurants, hotels . . . they’re all closed.
‘Immediately after lockdown lifted it was crazy. We were working seven days a week, but now it’s all calmed down. The congestion charge doesn’t help.
‘And we have a lot of clients who fly in from Europe and Dubai and they’re not travelling now.
‘I’m hoping now schools have gone back it will help. But it’s perilous at the moment. Not for Nicky and me, but for our staff who work on commission.’
The slowdown in business has not influenced her decision to sell her home — business and personal finances are entirely separate; she and Nicky have not been rendered financially vulnerable by the pandemic. It is, she insists, just time to scale down and ‘give some money to the kids’.
Three years ago, following an interview with Lesley, I revealed that she and Nicky — despite the widespread belief that they were married ( even their children assumed they were) — had never actually tied the knot.
So I ask her now: is there a man in her life? ‘I haven’t been in a relationship for four years,’ she says. ‘I was, but we just decided it wasn’t working.
‘I can’t imagine having anyone living in my house full-time. I haven’t lived with anyone since Nicky and I don’t think I could.
‘A man of my age just wants home comforts and I’m not sure I could offer that. I don’t want to be a housewife. So I’ll just stay a spinster!’ She shrieks with laughter. ‘Getting married? It’s such a bizarre thought. So alien. I can’t imagine it!
‘But weirder things have happened, haven’t they? Just look at Jerry Hall and Rupert Murdoch. Power is an aphrodisiac, isn’t it?’