Here’s one crafty colouring trick that won’t backfire

THE Advertising Standards Authority has banned an ad that appears to show Christina Hendricks, the lush redheaded Mad Men actress, go blonde overnight with one Nice ’n Easy rinse, ta-da!

This is because, in fact, Hendricks, pictured right in the series, is a natural blonde who was told to stop dyeing her hair red for eight weeks. Her real colour started coming through, then she dyed it yellow for the ad and then back to red and the process was filmed but shown in reverse order. Tsk!

You may say ‘So what?’, but several big dogs had to fall on their swords at the BBC when they, too, reversed a sequence in a trailer (in effect, an ad for a Royal documentary), which appeared to show the Queen storming out of a photoshoot when she was actually gliding in.

Bald heads at Procter & Gamble, which makes the dye, might roll like billiard balls over this, too. You really should not try to fool women when it comes to hair dye – it’s too important to them.

John Frieda, a man who has made a fortune out of bottle blondes, once admitted (in private) that all women had to do to lighten their hair without using expensive treatments or professional ‘colourists’ was to empty half the contents of a shampoo bottle, then top it up with peroxide. Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat. Now that’s nice ’n easy. Cheap, too. I pass this on as part of my reader service.