Nicky Clarke - a cut above the rest

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Nicky seems completely unconcerned, and even a little baffled by the thought that any of the new crop might be seen as competition per se, and many would agree. Certainly, Nicky has been the first really high-profile celebrity hairstylist since the previous generation of superstar crimpers, back in the 1960s and 1970s.

One of the first famous people to visit Nicky's new salon in 1991 was Gianni Versace.

"The night before we opened, he just walked in through the door. He was here for Vogue's 75th anniversary and he was staying at the Connaught. Anyway, he walked in about 1 o'clock in the morning while we were all there polishing and cleaning and stuff and he said, 'What is this place?', because it wasn't very obvious straight off. So, I said it was a hairdressing salon and he thought it was fabulous.

"There were statues everywhere. You see, a friend of one of my stylists had a really upmarket, smart furniture shop in Pimlico but he didn't have enough room to store all his stock, so he said, 'Look, I'll put all the stuff in here!'. So, we had about £5 million worth of furniture. He said that he'd rather show the furniture to customers in situ in central London, and if something was sold he'd simply replace it with something else. It worked out great! We opened and it looked incredible."

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