Breaking the law for a manicure Plus Things you only know when your wife has cut your hair

Faced with a 46-day wait before salons can reopen, Sonia Haria reports on the Britons breaking the law to keep up appearances

It is coming up to eight weeks since any of us were last able to see a hairdresser or beauty therapist – legally, that is – and, boy, are we feeling it. Is it just me or are our greying roots and split ends so much worse in lockdown 3? Yes, it has been grim in every sense of the word but it seems many more of us are breaking lockdown restrictions to keep up appearances with beauty treatments still off the menu until April 12. Even Anthea Turner has been at it. Photos emerged this week of her hosting a “pamper party” in her west London flat with friends, as well as two maskless massage therapists.

Publicly, we raise an eyebrow at such goings on. But, behind the scenes, a booming backstreet beauty industry is taking hold. For south London-based hairdresser Stephen Beaver, lockdown 3 has seen a boom in the underground market. He has been inundated with requests for cut and blow dry appointments, all of which he has refused.

“I’ve got a big group of wealthy clients who all know each other, and who have been messaging me throughout this lockdown to try to get me to come over and cut their hair,” he says. “They mostly have short hair, which would ordinarily need maintaining every six weeks.”

Beaver usually charges £250 for an hour’s cut and blow-dry, but has been offered up to £1,500 over the past couple of weeks. The process outlined by his clients over Whatsapp is planned to military precision: they offer to send a private driver to collect him (in case he gets stopped along the way and can use the excuse “for work” as his reason

Caught out: Anthea Turner held a ‘pamper party’ in her west London flat for travelling) and that he can have an on-the-spot Covid test at the door with results in 15 minutes, along with anyone else in the household getting their hair cut. “I don’t know where they get the tests from,” Beaver says. “They say that the driver will wait while I do the cut, and they will give me an envelope of cash. They’ve planned it all so well, so the driver will leave from one house and transport me to the next house to do more haircuts. It’s the perfect little set-up – they just can’t wait until April.”

Having refused, Beaver is now losing once-loyal clients to other stylists willing to break lockdown rules. Unable to work for the most part of the last year, he’s lost thousands of pounds of regular income a month.

Industry leaders have been quick to condemn any hairdressers or beauticians working illegally, as well as the clients pushing for appointments. “It’s bad for our reputation,” says Millie Kendall, chief executive of the British Beauty

Council. “But people are desperate for money and it goes to show you how much demand there is for hair and beauty treatments.”

Fiona Mcintosh, who runs the mobile beauty service Blow LTD, likens lockdown to prohibition and the emergence of “underground trade”. The fact that rogue stylists and beauticians are working is “incredibly frustrating”, she says. “We have vigorous hygiene standards in place such as Covid tests and kit inspections – which will kick off as soon as we’re allowed to reopen.

“But you don’t know what measures are in place if you’re booking someone now in lockdown. The problem is everyone is desperate to have their hair and beauty treatments done. So many more women are feeling more dreadful, lockdown is much worse this time around and beauty is one of the ways you can instantly feel much better.”

Mcintosh’s company has only been able to open for four months in the past year, and it has had a huge impact on her business. The April 12 reopening date can’t come soon enough, she tells me, and Blow had hundreds of bookings for haircuts, manicures and massages within hours of the roadmap speech on Monday.

This demand even extends to aesthetics. Cosmetic doctor Wassim Taktouk, who has been following lockdown rules, has heard some “extraordinary requests”, he tells me. “One client offered to come to my doorway with a big slab of polystyrene for her to put her head through for me to inject her forehead. I am inundated with requests on Instagram and have even been told that they would ‘make it worth my while’ with a bigger group of clients that I could see all at once.” His books are already full from April 12 until June. North London-based nail technician Lucy Tucker is also fully booked for mid-april following the PM’S speech. She has been inundated with requests from clients in lockdown, “asking if they can come to my garden for a manicure because I’ve had Covid and they have, too.

“But it’s morally wrong and I’m not risking a neighbour seeing it, and word getting out that I’m breaking the law over a £30 manicure,” she says.

Yet with little financial support from the Government for the beauty industry, she can understand why many nail technicians and hairstylists are driven to break the rules. “If you are really struggling to put food on the table, with absolutely no money coming in, it’s inevitable that these under-the-radar treatments will be happening,” she says.

For Stephen Beaver, the situation has become so tense that many of his clients are now accusing him of “being disloyal”. The driving force behind requests for illegal treatments, he admits, are his older, wealthier clients. Alarmingly, this group includes the wives of men working in government.

“Their husbands are involved in lockdown, and yet I’ve been offered money from people that know they are point-blank breaking the rules. As much as everyone is saying it is young people going around spreading it, in my world it’s the ones over-40 doing it, and anyone vaguely high-profile.”

This extends to Premier League footballers, who have been criticised for appearing with expert, intricate haircuts and cheekbone chiselling beards in lockdown. Last month, the Newcastle United striker Joelinton was fined £200 for getting a haircut in his barber’s garage, and then posting a picture of it online. As Beaver puts it: “It seems the more money you’ve got, the more the rules don’t apply.”

‘It seems the more money you’ve got, the more the rules don’t apply’