However bizarre The Discovery Tour of West Africa may have been, it came a very long second to the World Hairdressing Championships that I attended in Washington DC that summer. The world’s best hairdressers converged every two years for seminars, exhibitions and hair performances, which in 1996 were in the Washington Convention Centre. Jake Richardson, a great friend of mine, had planned to take his girlfriend as a guest of Wella to Washington. There was a falling out and I happened to be the first person he saw to invite, and I was more than happy to go at a moments notice. The hairdressing world was one that I was not familiar with. However, an all-expenses long- weekend trip courtesy of Wella was not something that I was going to turn down. We were flown to Washington and treated to a suite in the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill. Jake and I were great mates, but this was the world hairdressing competition, so everybody assumed we were gay. We couldn’t have both been more heterosexual if we tried, but we played along with the intrigue for the other guests. Jake’s family ran a number of hair dressing salons alongside their other businesses and a property company in Northampton. They were an established distributer of Wella hair products, so each year they would be invited to attend an event like this. The trips were unique and this event, known as “Hair World”, had no expense spared.
