'Lovely' Princess Diana's welcoming gesture for her hairstylist revealed
Celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke has praised the "lovely" and welcoming nature of one of his most famous clients, the late Princess Diana.
Princess Diana made sandwiches for Nicky Clarke when he visited her to cut her hair.
The late royal - who died in a Paris car crash in 1997 - had either the 67-year-old stylist or his younger brother Michael tend to her locks at Kensington Palace, and despite her regal status, she was always "sweet [and] lovely" towards them.
Nicky told The Sunday Times: "Both Michael and I had Princess Diana as a client. I was already on nodding terms with her from the school run — my eldest son, Harrison, was at the same place as Prince William.
"When I went round to Kensington Palace with all my gear she made me a cheese sandwich. She was just this very sweet, lovely girl."
Diana wasn't the only high-profile client that Nicky would visit at home, because one of his first celebrity clients was Dame Elizabeth Taylor, and she refused to go to his workplace.
He recalled: I was 20 when I cut Elizabeth Taylor’s hair. It was the day after we met at a dinner party, where she consumed a huge amount of vodka.
"Liz asked if I could fit her in the next day and I said, 'Just come to the salon.'
"Her response was a complete Oscar-winning performance, 'Darling, I haven’t been to a salon since Alexandre de Paris cut my hair for Cleopatra in 1963.' "
Nicky had to turn down a request to tend to the tresses of his idol David Bowie because he was too busy, but he got a "second chance" years later and was thrilled to find the Starman hitmaker was as "amazing" as he had hoped.
He said: "As a teenager I always cut Michael’s hair. But my first haircut wasn’t him, it was a schoolmate.
"It was a choppy feather cut but I’d had no training and he was brilliant to trust me.
"I’ve always been a massive David Bowie fan, which probably influenced the style. When I left school at 16 I was a £12-a-week trainee at Leonard Lewis’s in Mayfair. I had to sweep the floor. I completed my apprenticeship in ten months instead of the usual three years.
"About a decade later, when I was successful and working with John Frieda, Bowie did call the salon and ask for a cut. It was thrilling but I had to say no because I was booked for a job in the US.
"I had a second chance years later, but found it hard pretending I wasn’t a superfan. They say never meet your heroes but David was amazing — as was Bryan Ferry."
