Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

‘I hope the entire tribunal becomes infested with lice’

Rod Liddle on the case of Bushra Noah, the headscarf-wearing Muslim who has just won £4,000 from the Wedge hair salon

Rod Liddle on the case of Bushra Noah, the headscarf-wearing Muslim who has just won £4,000 from the Wedge hair salon

I used to dye my hair — Midnight Auburn, from Clairol. Yes, because I’m worth it. I did it myself, once every three or four months or so, always ruining several perfectly good towels in the process. I don’t dye it any more because my girlfriend says that if I do, she’ll bin me. This is because a man dyeing his hair is both undignified and vain, she says: however, I think her opposition stems from the fact that if I got rid of all the grey, I would be irresistible to all women. She would suddenly have intense competition. She would come home from whatever it is she does during the day, all that onerous waxing, and find a panting queue at the front door, headed by Angelina Jolie and Caroline Flint. But either way, my hair is now a sort of greyish-white with strawberry blonde highlights — she can’t do anything about me putting the highlights in because they’re not the consequence of Clairol, they’re the consequence of nicotine. Truth be told, I’ve written my hair off. It’s hideous. As time goes by, more and more parts of the body are left to destruction by hostile forces; the hair, the gut, the skin, the liver.

So I will probably not be applying for a job at the Wedge hair salon in King’s Cross, London — despite the fact that there is a current vacancy, apparently, occasioned by the failure of one Bushra Noah to get a job there. The owner of the salon, Sarah Desrosiers, told an industrial tribunal that the people working in her business needed to project a ‘funky, urban image’ and that the salon should ‘showcase alternative hairstyles’.

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