Comb as you are: why Liverpool's hair salons are microcosms of the city

‘It’s not just a place of work, it’s my family and my home’

By Abi Whistance

I was around 15 years old when I got my first job working in a slightly scruffy hair salon, a 15-minute walk up the road from my childhood home in Willenhall. I was hired as their Saturday girl. The job largely entailed scrubbing dried hairspray off the back of chairs with nothing but a warm dishcloth, and (if you really wanted to impress) your bare nails. 

It was by no means an easy feat — me in my 4’11” glory, balancing precariously on top of stools to cram 30 sopping wet towels in a rickety dryer that would shake like it was going to explode. Despite fearing for my life every time I encountered that demonic, whirring machine, I enjoyed the job. Why? Well, there has never been a better spot to soak up gossip than in a hair salon. 

Each week I’d stroll in, handing out poorly made cups of tea to the old ladies of Willenhall in exchange for a 50 pence piece and my weekly dose of hot tittle tattle about Jeane’s new boy toy, Kath’s outrageously flashy new garden fence or how John had cheated on Elaine for the fourth time. As mundane as it may have seemed to an outsider, this scandal over a background of blow dryers was thrilling; the dirty looks we threw at passersby and side-eyes we exchanged finally made me feel like I was one of the grown ups. 

The writer, aged 16 with an outrageous haircut, looking rather serious in someone’s kitchen... Photo: Abi Whistance/The Post

So, when I find myself years later in a similarly dinky hair salon in Garston gossiping with old ladies, I feel right at home. Hell, I’m almost tempted to help with the towels.

This time though, I’m here at Cathy’s of Garston for research purposes. Since moving to Liverpool last year, I’ve tried my fair share of salons. With more hairdressers per person than any other city in England, it’s no wonder I’ve had a blast with big blow dries (a rite of passage here, thanks to Cilla Black et al), foils, highlights and layers.

Yet it's not the breadth of choice that fascinates me so much as the ecosystem of regulars who make up Liverpool’s salons. Where else do you witness the mingling of young and old? Of brickies who pop in with a chip butty while they wait for their wives? Of deep, dark secrets pouring out of people when they sit in one of those big black chairs? It’s a strange sense of intimacy you’d struggle to find anywhere else. 

So, I’m out on a mission to infiltrate one of these little communities once more. It’s just past 10.30am on a Tuesday when I arrive at Cathy’s of Garston, a salon opened in 1969 by a 19-year-old Cathy Booth. It’s already full, the smell of hair dye in the air and an elderly woman crouched haphazardly over a sink being doused in water. It’s no surprise it’s so busy — Cathy’s is the longest serving hair salon in south Liverpool and has won nearly a dozen awards over its six decades in business. Its late owner Cathy has become somewhat of a legend in Garston thanks to her larger than life personality and, of course, impressive updos and beehives. 

Cathy’s of Garston has long done blow dries to rival Cilla Black. Photo: Flickr

“She was a lot of different talents in one lady, and everyone just adored her,” Cathy’s daughter Suzanne tells me. She now runs the salon after her mother passed away from heart failure in 2021, and is overjoyed I’ve showed up to ask her all about the place’s history. It seems I’ve chosen a great day to come. Guiding me around the salon, Suzanne points out a whole host of regulars, some of whom have been coming here for over 50 years (some even babysat her as a child). 

“When I was a kid my mum used to send me off with customers. But she’d never call them that, she’d say ‘your Auntie is going to take you out’,” Suzanne explains, adding that she’d often do the rounds, knocking on clients’ houses asking for a chocolate biscuit because ‘her Mum said she could have one’. “They called me the sweeper because I’d knock on every house,” she laughs. 

Another woman in her thirties, named Nicola, chimes in. Three generations of her family come to this salon, she says, and her mum is one of the women who used to babysit Suzanne (and feed her endless biscuits). She warmly tells me she’s “part of the furniture now”, before turning to her left to natter away to another regular, an old lady named Doreen. 

“Mum always said when we were little, it’s not just a place of work, it’s my family and my home,” Suzanne says, pointing up at a framed photo of her Mum on the wall. It’s a sentiment that appears to go both ways. I’m told often when the place gets busy and Suzanne is rushed off her feet, customers jump in to help out. “I think everyone in here has washed somebody’s hair before,” Doreen chips in as she’s guided over to the sink. She’s been coming here for over 50 years and would never go anywhere else. She even takes home towels from the salon on a monthly basis to stitch up any holes. 

The late Cathy Booth. Photo: Cathy’s of Garston

This salon is more than a place to get your hair done. There are worlds that revolve around this place, lives that are shaped around the time spent here. When Cathy died three years ago, the funeral car pulled up outside the shop so customers could pay their respects. “You should have seen the street, it was chock-a-block,” Suzanne says, “my mum must have got over 5000 cards when she passed. It was an eye opener to see how many people she touched.”

Yet Cathy’s isn’t alone in its impact on the local community, nor am I in noticing this microcosm of the world. Drew Quayle is a Liverpool playwright and the man behind The Salon, a play that first toured the city back in 2009. The show is set in a salon in Liverpool, and follows the relationships between hairdresser and client, and the drama that plays out inside its four walls. 

Drew was inspired to write the play after noticing the confessional nature of conversations inside hairdressers. “It was a revelation for me really, that people go to this place for one thing and use it for something else,” he says, adding that for some people “it can be like a therapy session”. “It’s incredible how open people are in those hours they’re there. It’s almost shocking to a degree, in both a humorous sense but also a really honest sense.”

It’s something that, according to Drew, is completely unique to women’s salons. Admittedly I haven’t spent much time knocking around barbershops, but according to him, conversations are usually restricted to the latest football result or what you’re doing with your weekend. In a women’s salon, “nothing is off the agenda” — full confessionals about divorces, deaths and intimate health problems that left him blushing in his seat.

The Salon by Drew Quayle. Photo: David Munn/The Salon 

He tells me about one salon in south Liverpool (that we will not name for reasons that will become clear) that his wife used to attend. “There was a man that’d come in just for a chat, he’d have this big black bin bag of stolen goods,” he says. Inside that bag were only the essentials: socks, bacon and gay porn DVDs. “He was selling this stuff in a women’s salon,” Drew laughs. “Everyone just bought the bacon and didn’t bat an eyelid.” 

For Drew, he sees interactions like this as “real microcosms of the world”. “You’ve got these mother figure hairdressers who act as a bit of a counsellor for girls, you’ve 16-year-olds all the way up to 90-year-old women,” he says. “And then you’ve got these other people who just come into the salon and it’s all about socialising. Where else do you get all that in one room?”

While I’m not after a pack of bacon or any pornographic DVDs, I could do with a trim. I wander up to Aura on Aigburth Road, a stone’s throw away from the hustle and bustle of Lark Lane. While this place doesn’t quite have the history of Cathy’s and perhaps caters to a slightly younger crowd, I’m interested to see if the “confessional” nature of hairdressers that Drew refers to exists in a slightly more modern place. 

I’ve got my eavesdropping hat on, and before long I’m honed in on a conversation to my left. A woman in her thirties is having a dinner party tonight, but she’s dreading ‘Sarah’ showing up — someone I can only infer caused a scene at a previous gathering. Her hairdresser nods solemnly in agreement, then suggests a tinted root. 

The Salon by Drew Quayle. Photo: David Munn/The Salon 

After a swift shampoo and condition I’m guided to my own chair by a hairdresser named Kirsty. I tell her I’m a journalist writing about hairdressers in the city and after a slightly nervous beginning she starts to open up about her own experiences at Aura. She’s been working here for over a decade, and like most of the stylists here, she has her favourite clients who share their deepest darkest secrets with her. “People will tell you anything when you’re a hairdresser,” she laughs, explaining she’ll often be one of the first people to hear about a potential engagement, a secret pregnancy or a row with a family member. 

She says she often feels like “she goes through life with people”, and has formed her own close relationships and friendships with customers that have been coming to her for nearly ten years. One of the other girls who works here invited some of her customers to her wedding, she says, and she has her own set of clients on Facebook that she chats to. 

As she chops away at my hair, I find myself opening up about my time in Liverpool. My likes, gripes, break-ups and what it’s like working in my job. She does the same — I learn all about her two kids, her burning desire to travel, her mad dashes to the airport after work when she was holidaying in her twenties. I’ve only been here 40 minutes, but by the time my blowdry is finished I feel a strange sense of familiarity with her. 

I pay up, Kirsty handing me a card with her name on for the next time I visit, which I promise I will. As I leave the salon, fresh trim and a pep in my step, a woman in her forties comes strolling in. She’s greeted by a warm crescendo of coos and hellos, before taking her seat. 

“You would not believe the month I’ve had,” she begins. 

Drew Quayle’s The Salon: The Sequel heads to St Helens Theatre Royal from Thursday, October 3 to Sunday, October 13 2024 for a limited run of 13 performances. Find out more here.