Beatles hairdresser Leslie Cavendish was on Private Passions, a BBC radio show where guests discuss their lives and favourite pieces of music, on 5 July. Cavendish left school and got an apprenticeship at Vidal Sassoon’s very fashionable salon in Bond Street, which is where he met Jane Asher:
I used to wash Jane’s hair. She had very long strawberry-blonde hair, very thick. This particular guy, the artistic director of Sassoon’s, in fact, Sassoon’s no. 2, Roger Thompson - he was the slowest hairdresser, but he was fantastic. He was somebody I - I wanted to cut hair like him. But he wasn’t like Sassoon, [who was] the Nureyev with the movements of the hair. His scissors were quieter than Sassoon’s. He was very patient. He used to take ages and ages. I used to go wash the hair, come back, sit Jane down, get the blow drier, brush it, do it section by section, I would then go over and say, “Mr Roger, Miss Asher’s waiting for you, she’s finished.” Now, I’ve done most of the hard work! But then he comes over, and he would look at it, and put his fingers through it, and there would be a little hair, that much there, he’d give it a little trim, and he would go like that, and she’d say, “Thank you, Roger.” Which is fine. That’s the way it is.
I then become a stylist. And two - three - on the fourth occasion when she came in, the receptionist said to me, “Can you do Jane’s hair?” She was a little bit upset that Roger, again, hasn’t got time to do it. I said, “Sure.” We all knew she was going out with Paul McCartney. We all knew she was doing a film, Alfie. She’s in the papers the whole time, so no one asked anything about anything. If she wanted to talk, she used to talk about filming.
And she said to me, “What are you doing this afternoon? Have you got time to cut the boyfriend’s hair?” Well, I know who the boyfriend is. And I said, “Yes, I have got time to cut the boyfriend’s hair!”
And she said OK, and I said when, and we arranged a time in the afternoon, and I said, “Oh, by the way, Jane, where do you live?” And she said, “7 Cavendish Avenue.” I said, “Jane, that’s my surname.” She said, “Maybe it’s meant.”
Roger, who ended up opening Sassoon’s in New York, the first big one there - he never forgave me. He should have cut the boyfriend’s hair. So unfortunately, I regard Roger - bless him - as the Pete Best of hairdressing.
