I was looking on You Tube for a particular clip of The Glaswegian comedienne Dorothy Paul, but sadly it doesn’t seem to exist. It was something which she said about bad hair styles, to the effect that a bad perm meant house arrest for 3 months because you couldn’t go out in public until it had grown out. It was Peggy Ann’s comment on a dodgy hairdo which had her crying for ages which set me off thinking about Dorothy Paul.

I think we’ve all probably been the victims of bad hairdressers in the past, in fact that’s why I avoided going to a salon for about 30 years, it is safer to hack at it myself!

In the 1970s for some unaccountable reason I got my hair permed for the first and only time. Unfortunately the woman who should have done it had to take her child to an emergency dental appointment, you see how all of the details are seared into my memory! The upshot was that my poor locks were assaulted by a junior who was obviously clueless and I left the salon about four hours later with the most hideous bubble hairdo and stinking of perm solution. My hair felt like cotton wool and worst of all she had even permed my fringe (I think that’s ‘bangs’ in the US). Anyway I looked like something which had escaped from a mental institution and I had to go straight to work in the library like that as my shift was 1 p.m. until 8 p.m.

When I eventually got home I washed my hair about half a dozen times in an attempt to get it back to normal, or at least get rid of the smell. I managed to make it look a bit better but it felt like cotton wool for ages afterwards, is that normal with a perm? Anyway, I learned my lesson the hard way, no more perms!

I did find a Dorothy Paul clip which does mention a haircut, I think I’ve had some of this clip on here before but I thought it might be of interest to some people. In this clip which was filmed at a Glasgow theatre, Dorothy Paul is in character as a theatre cleaner. I wonder if non Scots can understand it all?! We actually saw the whole show when it toured the provinces years ago. She’s really very funny.

http://youtu.be/mNHLO6krOdY

I once went into a salon with my hair about waist length, intending to have a couple of inches trimmed off the ends. At that time some kids in the library called me ‘the lady with the golden hair’. The hairdresser raved about my ‘beautiful’ hair – then trimmed it all off up to my ears!

Have you been assaulted by a hairdresser?