It’s a new year which means a whole new set of parties and hair cutting fun from our fav hairstylist, Stuart Phillips!

Hope everyone’s new year was good, I ended up going to a last minute party which was rubbish, it was a fancy dress party, In my experience people generally don’t dress up, with this in mind I decided not to, when I walked in you guessed it everybody was in fancy dress except me lol, well at least I looked good.At 11.30pm I decided to leave the party but then my friend Anja walked in with her brother and his fiancé they didn’t like the party either (they were not in fancy dress) so we decided to drive to my house and celebrate their.The time was now 11.45pm and would take around 30 minutes of driving so I felt a little pressure to get home in time, with this in mind I drove a bit too fast but still got home around 12.15am.We watched a film, hung out in the snow drinking and danced in my lounge; it turned out quite a good new years eve.

A couple of months ago I received an email from a Rumanian glossy magazine called “The One” they interviewed me and over the new year they sent me a copy, I was pleasantly surprised on the quality of the magazine, although I couldn’t understand the language the layout and quality of the pages were really nice, but what was really cool was the front cover because my name was on it, that’s a first. In my last blog I mentioned about this colossal project that I was working on and gave a few clues, well now I’ll tell you, at some point in 2010/11 I’ll be tempting another world record which is “TO DO THE HIGHEST HAIRCUT IN THE WORLD” I’ll be climbing Mount Everest and when I reach the highest point possible for me I’ll attempt to cut one of my camera crews hair or basically anyone that makes it with me, these are just some of the problems I’ll face –
1. I’ve handed in my proposal to the Guinness Book of Records for creating such a record (as there is no such title in the record book) so need to ask permission for this record attempt, they ask you to wait up to six weeks for an answer, I have another month to wait for their verdict.
2. Will need a sponsor for the record attempt because it costs £30000.00 per person to climb and there be around ten of us climbing, will also need a certain wage because including your training you’re looking at about five months off work.
3. Am I fit enough? Well that’s a question, I think I am but it’s to do with the altitude, people become very sick the higher they go, all this will be determined in my training (if I’m fit enough) for this kind of training you go to a special place where they deprive you of a certain amount of oxygen (similar feeling to when your high up in a mountain) then test to see how fit you are on certain exercise machines etc.
4. I will need to talk to someone that has summated the mountain because there are so many questions the most important few being – is it possible to actually move your fingers to do a haircut in temperatures of -50, can I take off the balaclava to do the haircut or will my clients ears fall off and will the hair become one piece of ice, if I try and comb it will it shatter.
5. I will need special scissors made that will not crack in -50 and will need to be big enough to fit round my gloves.
6. Will need to find an extreme camera crew that can climb such a treacherous mountain and film at the same time.
7. To find a charity that is big enough that can raise a huge amount of money. They were just a few questions that I can think of but I’m sure there be many more!I feel this is such a dangerous and difficult thing to attempt especially when I’ve got zero experience, but the flip side is if I get back in one piece meaning no frost bite then I think it will be the most amazing adventure of my life!!

Wish me luck folks!
Stuart x

Confessions of a Celebrity Hairdresser:

It’s been really busy in the salon thus the reason why I haven’t written a blog, my staff and I were not Shaw back in the beginning of November how busy it was actually going to be because of the economic climate but it certainly did go crazy from the end of November, it has to because normally the first ¾’s of January is very quiet and if you haven’t made enough money over Christmas you’re in serious trouble, people generally think you make a killing over this period but we don’t it just averages itself out.

Although I’m a party goer generally, would you believe that I haven’t been out to one party yet, I’m just relaxing at home and watching movie after movie and playing the Xbox which I haven’t played in two years, I’ve been killing aliens on a 150 inch monitor, come on let’s face it who wouldn’t want to shoot aliens on a screen that big lol.

On Christmas day I went to my sister’s house and saw her side of the family that I haven’t seen since the year before, the food was excellent, well done Joanne, a couple of hours into the evening I decided to drink about three measures of good old Baileys (I normally don’t drink much alcohol at all, if I do I’m a bit of a lightweight) with-in half an hour I was pretty much drunk, annoyed my mum’s boyfriend by acting like a crazy drunk man, then fell asleep and woke up two hours later, hung out a bit more then went home to shoot more aliens, I mean what was that all about.

I didn’t get out of bed until really late on boxing day but spent most of the day reflecting back at my life for 2009, it certainly has been an exciting year for my business with the PR etc, I’ve had a few girlfriends but single again, I suppose I mustn’t forget I was married for 13 years so single life is actually quite good, having said that if I met someone and we were right for each other than I would be quite happy to settle down, I never really hear from my X wife, I did send her a happy Christmas text but she never responded back, silly girl lol.

I think your starting to understand that I don’t like the normal quiet life but full of excitement and adventure, well next year could be quite that as I already have a huuuuuuge project in my head, I will leave you with this thought, it will take about one year minimum to pull off, it’s extremely dangerous and one could quite easily die (and I mean that literally) trying to pull it off, it will involve about ten people and will cost around one million pounds to execute, there are about twenty dangerous reasons why not to do it, there you go I will leave it at that.

I wish everyone a happy new year x

Stuart’s blog is proudly sponsored by The Lash Clinic, Specialists in semi-permanent eyelash extensions..

On Thursday 26th November I had such a fab day, The Daily Star previously contacted me to ask if one of the patients from Great Ormond Street could come to the salon and be treated to a makeover?

The Ladies name is Jade and she suffers from an arachnoid cyst, which is a very rare form of fluid on the brain, Jade has been living under the constant care of doctors and nurses for the past two years.Jade told the Star how she longed for a Cheryl Cole makeover, so that is exactly what I did.The difficult part was making Jade’s hair look thick because a large amount of her hair was missing from underneath of one side, so I first cut about three inches to help thicken the outline length, then after using a fair amount of mousse I used heated rollers to achieve bounce and fullness.Jade also had a make-up artist and fashion stylist to help with the look which was then photographed by the Star.I

have to say Jade is an amazing and brave person and I liked her very much and her mum Tracy was also really nice.I’m so pleased I did this makeover on such a fantastic person.The day was a mixture of emotions but most importantly Jade had a great day and that’s all that mattered.

Later on in the evening I was invited to a bash in Kensal Green, [a long way from where I live] there were different celebs singing for charity including boy George and Sadie Frost, I went with my friend Ray Pantaki [he was in Eastenders for many years]

It was a great end to the day, boy did I sleep well that night!

www.stuartphillips.co.uk

For more information on TLC email: info@thelashclinic.com

Stuart’s blog is proudly sponsored by The Lash Clinic:

A couple of blogs ago I was talking about a PR idea that I had but couldn’t talk about it, now I can…

Although it started as a PR idea it had now changed quite a bit and now I’m not doing this just for PR but for the chance of helping people that would really appreciate it. My idea was to originally perform the £20000 haircut to a national paper using one of their journalist to experience it all [as I have already done this for numerous TV stations] this would be hard to execute because TV is a better way of showing this off, for a paper it would be a write-up and of course photographs taken, so I thought to myself what would make it more interesting and even more exciting so I came up with the idea of choosing 3 different women that would never normally get to experience this kind of service- maybe due to an illness or condition etc, I think it would be an amazing experience for them.

I approached the Daily Mirror because I’ve worked with them before and I trust them; they are also really nice people to work with -The Mirror liked the idea so they agreed to work with me on this project.

On Monday The Mirror placed a column near the centre of the paper giving the public a chance to write in explaining why they felt it should be them or someone they know that gets to experience all of this.

I first approached one of my good friends Tiger Lilly (who has a gorgeous voice) and asked her if she would like to sing in my salon (to the three women) and Tiger Lilly said she would love to.

I won’t say who else is performing in case whoever has won is reading this; I want this to be a surprise.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been mainly focusing on this project because I want this to be a big success making it a truly memorable day for the three ladies- one they’ll remember for a long time to come.

Stuart

www.stuartphillips.co.uk

For more info on TLC email: info@thelashclinic.com

Confessions of a Celebrity Hairdresser

The last couple of weeks have flown by, My friend Eli who is half German invited me to Dusseldorf to be filmed by the German TV crew RTL, this is the same company that filmed me in the salon, (RTL has offices all over Europe), the objective is to get me as well known as possible in Europe and I suppose Germany is a great start.

One of my friends Oliver Morris who runs a company in London called Fashionaires (this involves a team of models, hairdressers, Make-up Artists and photographers and they set up shoots in the most gorgeous lavish surroundings or produce fashion shows etc) found out from Eli that she was flying me out to Germany and thought it would be a good experience to see how the Germans put on fashion shows, Oliver is such a lovely guy that I was pleased when I found out that he was going to fly to Dusseldorf with me.

The reason why Eli wanted me in Germany was to first of all look after the designer’s hair Alfredo Pauli, (Eli does a lot of freelance work for him) Alfredo was producing the fashion show and he has not had his haircut for 34 years “gulp” as strange as that sounds it’s true and Eli wanted RTL to film this occasion, Alfredo is a very big name amongst the affluent Germans, he is also controversial as he mainly designs fur coats, this sort of show could never take place in London for the obvious reasons but the German society doesn’t seem to care.
Before the show started I also had to perform a make-over for RTL TV for a non speaking English lady, this proved to be quite difficult because while the camera’s were rolling if for any reason that the Lady became a little nervous or needed to ask something, that’s when things became a little difficult as the main German/English speaking person was Eli and she was pre occupied with other things, then if my model spoke to me I just looked smiled and carried on cutting, that seemed to sort of work!! when I finished the make-over (her make-up was already applied) Alfredo dressed her in a beautiful dress (which is also designed) and a fur coat, she looked great.

The show was also the most expensive fashion show to take place in Germany probably in the world, Alfredo used £37 million pounds of fur in his four hour show, the show its self cost half a mill to produce as the stage setting and calibre of models used were all high end.
As well as being entertained by beautiful German models the audience its self were very interesting, they were a mixture of extremely wealthy over the top dress designs (combination of Star Trek, Dallas and Buffy the vampire slayer,) with sooooo much surgery that the words face lift took on a whole new meaning, but they did seem friendly.
This all took place on day one, the next day Eli set up a photo shoot in a well known salon in Cologne, I showed the staff my cutting & styling techniques and while this was going on a photographer from a regional paper was snapping away, the story would go into six regional papers rather that just one.

The salon owner told me that the step-by-step photos would be placed on their salon walls with the finished look outside in their window, that was pretty cool.

In the evening Oliver, Eli, one of Eli’s friends and I went to a German nightclub, (my first) well it was crap, I do love partying in London but it was like something I went to 15 years ago, anyway it was good to check out the nightlife even though I’ll probably give it a miss next time (if I go again)

The next morning Oliver and I was supposed to fly home but the alarm didn’t go off, I have never shot out of bed so fast, got dressed in one minute, screamed through to Oliver’s room to get the f… out of bed and then went down stairs banged on the door like a madman and probably scared the crap out of poor Eli, (Eli was driving Oliver and I back to Dusseldorf airport) luckily she drives at 150mph, so on this occasion I didn’t mind her driving that fast, what should have taken 90 minutes took about 30, love you El, Oliver and I only just made our flight.
My two day trip was fun, exciting, exhausting and most importantly very productive.

The possible PR that I mentioned last time that I couldn’t really talk about is going ahead but unfortunately I still can’t talk about it, as the subject matter is quite delicate but will be able to mention what it is by mid December, (that is when it should be out for all to see).

Chow for now x

To visit Stuart’s official website log on to www.stuartphillips.co.uk

BOLLYWOOD actress Sofia Hayat celebrated the launch of her new book -Dishonoured this week.

The actress and musician was guest of honour at the star studded bash at Baker Street’s Indali Lounge Indian restaurant on Monday night, and I Gobby Gibbs was lucky enough to attend!

Sofia whose a huge star in India and making massive waves here in the UK spoke exclusively to SHOWBIZ JUNGLE about the highs and lows of writing about her life….

Gobby Gibbs: ‘ Sofia thanks for talking to us today, I had a great time at your party Monday, how did you think it went?’

Sofia: ‘ Thanks for coming, it was a great night andI think it was very very successful…alot of hard work to organise but  it was brilliant. I got a bit emotinal during my speech it was the hardest thing to do because the books so personal but the main thing about the evening was to give everyone a taste of Bollywood and I think we achieved that.’

Gobby Gibbs: ‘ What’s the main message of your book, Dishonoured?’

Gobby Gibbs: ‘ Tell me about writing it…’

 Sofia: ‘ When Istarted writing the book I decided to start with a definition of ‘Honour Crimes’ and what it actually means.  The stories I’ve written about have gone world wide and people that have read my book have different views on them and on me and that’s fine that’s their pervogative.

I started writing with no real direction about what I was going to do but the more I wrote the more I felt I had a responsibility to keep writing. I then wanted to get involved in a charity. To be honest I was fed up of seeing the image of abused women as down trodden, unattractive and depressed and then I looked at myself attending red carpet events, wearing whatever I wanted and I thought I had to try and change the perception of abused women.

 I’m living proof you can achieve your dreams, whatever they are.

Gobby Gibbs: ‘ And the future..what does it hold for you?’

Sofia: ‘ Wow I have so much happening it’s all so amazing. In November I have a couple of filming coming out in India and then I’m flying their to take part in the Chennai international Fashion Week where i’ll be performing. Long term I hope my book makes a massivbe impact on people’s lives and I help it continues to spread the message.

I’ve also just recorded an album so we shall see what happens with that…’

Gobby Gibbs: ’ Thanks for talking to us Sofia it’s been a pleasure and I look forward to reading your book.’

Sofia Hayat’s autobiography DISHONOURED is out in all good book shops now.

Confessions of a Celebrity Hairdresser.

He missed a week but he’s back and better than ever before, Stuart Phillips ladies and gentleman…

Wow what another crazy and interesting few weeks I’ve had, so busy that I actually missed a week for my blog, sorry about that but here I am now working that keyboard, again I find it difficult to know where to start, normally at the beginning but with me there really isn’t one as things are being thrown at me continuously from every angle.
On the social scene I’ve been to about 15 parties in the last three weeks, (some of them were actually quite good which means 4-5am in the morning).
On the press side of things, I’ve so far had four National, one regional and sixteen international newspapers, six radio interviews, around twenty five mentions on different radio stations, one TV news story, three TV Shows and a huge amount of national and international on-line magazines (I think that’s about all so far), you can understand now what I mean by CRAZY few week’s I’ve had.
Since all this press, when I’m out socializing and get introduced to someone (as you do) and they ask what do I do for work It’s kind of hard to just say “oh I’m a hairdresser” as you have read previously it’s definitely a bit more than that and as I mention the word hairdresser they say OMG your that guy that charges £200000 for a cut, firstly it’s quite amazing that almost everyone in the country has read, heard or seen it somewhere, secondly it’s soooooo much more than just a hair cut, for example my VIP hair package was just filmed by CNN International last Monday and for this my clients demands were – one night’s stay at the Mayfair Hotel, a full body massage in her hotel room (I performed this as I’m also a qualified masseur) a butler, flowing champagne, A champagne dinner, two bodyguards, some beautiful jewellery by Chaumet Jewellers from Bond Street (this included £10 million pounds of jewellery brought to the salon with a six person team) my client bought a necklace worth £700000.00 and a pair of earrings worth £350000.00, now that makes my £20000.00 VIP package seem pretty cheap lol, also a fashion stylist called Andrea from fashion mode came over to show a selection of dresses, the chosen two dresses were taken to the Mayfair hotel and later on that evening the stylist would be on hand to dress my VIP client, a hat milliner, no other than Louise Mariette (he was the judge on Britain’s next top model), a make-up artist, manicurist, a band called Heist performed in the salon to my client (early that morning I had a PA system brought in) a pop singer called Anja with her two dancers, a rock chick group called Candy Rock, and three girls from a band called Anonymous and a well respected palmist, now that’s value for money.
As the filming was done by CNN I got things a lot cheaper mainly the musicians, as this was great exposure for everyone concerned.
At the moment I’m working on some new PR strategies, I realise that not all PR works it’s about lucky timing with the newspapers and magazines etc, it can be quite off putting though as you can spend days even week’s investing time into what you think will be a PR success story only to be rejected by the press, but my motto is “if first you don’t first succeed don’t freaking give up” lol, an idea can be brilliant but still get you nowhere, there really are so many elements to a news story, I’m not going to divulge my ideas now in case it doesn’t happen I should know within the next few weeks whether it gets picked up, so either way I’ll spill the beans next time.
Enjoy……..

Confessions of a Celebrity Hairdresser:

Our very own fortnightly columnist STUART PHILLIPS reveals all about his latest PR venture that seen him become a household name overnight…

One would have thought that coming up with a PR idea about a £20000.00 hair cut might have made a little ripple or none at all, (being that it’s such a crazy idea) but what I didn’t expect was the huge response that I got worldwide.
The last newspaper to cover my story in the UK was the London Paper (which was last week) I received a full page, I have also received a full page in the Mirror which you saw last week in my blog, half a page in the Telegraph, A column in the Mail and the same in the Metro.

 
My story has continued around the globe with the New York Daily News, the Irish Times and a majority of other newspapers from Japan, Spain, France, Lithuania, and Croatia, I’m sure there’s been others, it’s just hard to track them all down.
I was also approached by a German TV station called Pro Sibean, which is our version of Channel 4, They came into the salon last week and filmed one of my 20G haircuts, it was really cool as they started off in the hotel room with my client and filmed her getting ready then I met her with the film crew in my salon, the filming went on for 10 hours, then In the evening I invited 10 of my girlfriends to meet me in the salon because the production crew wanted to film me socialising with my client and lots of pretty girls, (lucky that my client was willing) It looked very cool as I was sitting in the middle of this huge couch with 5 girls either side of me, “oh I love my job”
Last week I received an email from a Croatian TV station called HRT, they explained to me that there are only two TV stations in Croatia and they owned one of them, they continued to explain that Stuart Philips is becoming a national celebrity in Croatia as I’ve been seen in there newspapers and on TV being spoken about, I’ll give you one guess about what, you got it “the £20G hair cut” and they wanted to know if they could come to my salon and film me, they explained that the people of Croatia will get to know the real me, how nuts is that, I originally thought that it was a mate of mine winding me up, but it wasn’t, they came in on the 4th September and interviewed me, (I’m so going to Croatia for my next holiday, being a national celeb and all that, hehe)
It took me a couple of days to come down from all this excitement, then when everything was back to normality I received a phone call from CNN International, they heard about my story and they want to film a short documentary, “wow” this sort of publicity is priceless as it gets transmitted to around 250 countries which I was told included 20 million hotels, since I’ve been given the go ahead I’ve been busy making a story board for the documentary, I’ve had so many ideas for CNN, my favourite so far is finding a couple of girl bands and solo artist’s to sing in my salon to my VIP client, the reason I’m going in that direction is because my client emphasised that she wants’ a lot of rock/pop music being played, so I thought why don’t I bring the music to her LIVE, I’ve already started interviewing different rock/pop bands.

After the filming is finished I will reveal all, (can’t wait) better get back to that story board.
Bye for now

Stuart x

Our very own Stuart Phillips makes OK! Magazine as he celebrates his salons 15th birthday.

Happy Birthday!