IN her never-ending search for a bargain, my wife came home from the shops with a "professional home haircut set". We have a perfectly good hairdresser called Nigel, who's been doing the kids' hair ever since our eldest first sat on a pile of towels and demanded a Noddy haircut.

But the woman in my life decided she could do the job herself and sat down to watch the instruction video which came with her proud new purchase.

"It's all you need to help create professional hairstyles for all your family," said the narrator, soporifically.

He announced that he would be showing us three different styles for boys: The Classic Cut, The Contemporary Cut, and The Mushroom Cut.

"Start long - you can always cut hair short but you can't put it back once it's cut," he enlightened us before adding the four golden rules of hairdressing:

* Ensure you don't stoop.

* Place towel around shoulders.

* Leave hair dry while cutting.

* Work in good light.

The Classic Cut, with the 12mm guide comb attached to the clippers, was stylishly completed by the demonstrator on an adult model before she moved on to a perfectly-behaved little boy called John for the Contemporary Cut which gives "lots of volume, layers and an angular look".

The intriguing Mushroom Cut involved taking the clippers to another statue-still child model called Nicky, "using the 12mm comb for the lower section from the nape of the neck to the ears, then leaving it shaggy on top".

My wife quickly dismissed The Mushroom on the grounds that it looked ridiculous and - encouraged by the advice to use the pause button on the video to take it step by step - she plonked five-year-old Max, the naughty one, on a chair and eagerly primed her clippers for a bash at The Contemporary.

John and Nicky hardly moved in the video and smiled sweetly throughout. Max was a different proposition altogether.

Our narrator had been calmness personified: "Work on small sections, constantly checking through what you have done to ensure the overall result is even. Take your time, working methodically round the head." Oh so simple.

To say the reality was a shocking contrast is an understatement. I stood and watched an epic encounter between two combatants who refused to give in: a 41-year-old woman with a determined glint in her eye and a pair of buzzing clippers in her hand; and a five-year-old boy, wriggling to be free, kicking his legs, waving his arms, spitting hairs from his mouth and shouting: "I don't like it, I don't like it, let me go, let me go."

I expected an ear to drop to the floor at any minute as she held him down with one hand and clipped him with the other, like some crazed farmer shearing a hyperactive black sheep of the flock. Don't stoop? She had to do it bending double just to keep him under control.

If she'd reached for the pause button to check on her next step, he'd have been out of the chair, up the stairs and under his bed faster than she could say "short, back and sides".

It was all over in a mesmerising, manic minute. "There," she said, admiring her Contemporary Cut. "What do you think?" she asked me.

Lots of volume, layers and an angular look? More like lots of bald patches, tufts and a convict look. Remember Steve McQueen in Papillon? He looked stylish by comparison.

It may not have been The Mushroom but it looked positively fungoid.

So, to The Classic, The Contemporary and The Mushroom, add The Scalping. I'm sticking with Nigel.

THE THINGS THEY WRITE

THE aforementioned Nigel is Nigel Dowson, Cockfield lad and proficient at The Classic, The Contemporary, The Mushroom or any other style you care to mention.

In fact, he's famed for being the only barber to cut someone's hair underwater - a remarkable act, performed in Scuba gear at the Dolphin Centre in his younger days.

During a recent visit for a proper haircut, we were discussing how us dads have to get used to sitting in hospital waiting rooms.

Nigel had just got back from Darlington Memorial Hospital, where he'd spent hours waiting for his daughter to be seen by a doctor.

Bored out of his mind, he picked up an old newspaper and discovered that someone had filled in the crossword but failed to answer three clues.

Delighted to have discovered a way of filling the time, he set about completing the puzzle but found himself struggling.

He finally realised why. Whoever had started the crossword had got 'seven down' badly wrong.

"Donor - five letters" was the clue. 'Giver' should have been the answer.

The solution suggested was 'kebab'...

THE THINGS THEY SAY

IRENE Baxter, of Newcastle, was given some alarming news by her seven-year-old grandson Andrew Glendinning.

"Grandma, you've only got three years to live."

"Oh, why's that?" asked Grandma, understandably concerned.

"Because you're coming up to 67 and it says in The Bible that you only live for three score years and ten and that makes 70," replied the boy.

Published: 2908/2002