You'll find this little documentary gem in the I Player's Archive section. Originally made in 1994, this takes you into the arcane world of three women's hairdressing salons in Blackpool - Vanity Box, Mary's Way and Tricia"s.
Though it's filmed on the 90's the world you are being shown here is several decades older, more 1950's - 60's. The decor looks straight out of the 1970's. One salon has fake laminate wood wall paneling that my Father once lined the walls of our front room with.
This period piece, captures a long vanished world of old fashioned hair salons. Hiding in the back streets of Blackpool. Places where you would meet socially, gossip and tell of your woes to the hapless trainee. Where most of your clientele are blunt speaking elderly ladies in orthopeadic shoes, legs in thick stockinette. One conversation between two eighty year old centres on one woman's fall, which she insists was not a fall, she 'were knocked over' by a car driven by another female pensioner.
The proprietor of Vanity Box seems the likely model for one of Caroline Aherns characters. She's obsessed with death. Keeps a list of customers, noting when they'd died, just so there's no confusion. Then there is the 'funeral handbag' with some mints and a bit of money in it, for customers to borrow to appropriately attend a service with. Then there is the tale of the customer who died on the upstairs toilet. Which doesn't bare thinking about.
It is, in short, a real hoot. Well worth half an hour of anyone's time. A bona-fide classic.
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