MY wife’s words as I left home were firm and final.
“If you come back with a stupid Premier League haircut I’ll make you wear a balaclava,” she warned.
Studying shots of Man United showman Paul Pogba’s red-streaked barnet, created by the salon, I realised the last time I asked for a celeb-style cut was in 1976 — and that was a Dustin Hoffman. A Star Barbers owner Ahmed Alsanawi laughed. But as I looked at styles he has done for footie clients, I froze.
“Please, not a Pogba,” I begged. “Or, worse, a mop-head like David Luiz. How about a neat Diego Costa?”
Ahmed studied my hair, unchanged in three decades, and said: “Nah, too thin on top for a Costa. But I do want to give you a really good cut.” Ahmed, 26, a former Chelsea youth team player, told me: “I began cutting footballers’ hair ten years ago, starting with the youth team.
“Then they told the first team and players like John Terry started popping in. We have great banter. If you ask that old barber’s faithful, ‘Where did you go for your holidays?’ you hear amazing stories.
“The most famous cut I’ve done was Pogba’s. The first time I did his hair I shaved #Equal into it, for the anti-racism campaign.” Then I flinched as Ahmed said: “It would be wicked to shave The Sun into your head.”
Maybe next time. Instead, one of Ahmed’s team at the salon, in Chessington, Surrey, suggested I get a Cesc Fabregas. So Ahmed began doing me up like the Chelsea ace.
After shaving over my ears and creating a quiff, he joked: “It’s taken years off. You’ll have Wags after you.”
I paid the same £30 price as the stars — then returned home praying to escape the balaclava.
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