Haircut Sir? - Flat Top Days in Brixton

I was sad to hear of the death of  barber Andy Haralambous (1/06/1944 - 09/10/2018). For ten years from the late 1980s, Andy cut my hair regularly at his barber's shop at the bottom of Tulse Hill, Haircut Sir? In fact he cut my hair very regularly, as it was short and in need of constant attention. Andy was famous for his flat top haircuts at a time when this was the coolest hair style in town.

I'd had my first a few years earlier at Cyril's in Canterbury, where I was a student. That first time, around my 20th birthday, I didn't even know what it was called, I had to point at some passing rockabilly rebel and say 'like that'!  Not long after I started going to regular Thursday night sessions put on by Whitstable rockabilly band The Keytones at The Tankertons Arms there (this would have been 1983/84). I gravitated towards punkier hair styles for a while, including a short lived mohican, but within a few years I felt the call of the full flat top again.

In the 1980s, the flat top and variations of it were not confined to 1950s revivalists. There was the whole psychobilly scene wtih gothish elements and various post-punk short back and side merchants from Kirk Brandon to Morrissey. There was a black hip hop version, and let's not forget Grace Jones. In the pre-rave warehouse party/rare groove scene, there were flat tops aplenty and it was the haircut du jour of young gay London (including many lesbians as well as gay men).

When I moved to Tulse Hill Estate in Brixton in early 1987, I needed to keep my flat top sharp to go with my black Levi 501s and DMs for nights out at The Fridge and elsewhere. Andy was the local barber. But he was well known beyond the local area for his flat top skills - I remember him being mentioned in either Time Out or The Face, or possibly both, as doing one of the best flat tops in London.  People came from far and wide. Like many London barbers, Andy was from Cyprus, like most barbers from wherever he enjoyed regaling his captive seated audience with his views on the state of the world!

Some Haircut Sir handiwork

collecting for striking P&O shipping workers in Brixton 1988 with Andy flat top

In the ecstasy fuelled 1990s long hair made a come back, but there was no going back for me. There might have been some colouring added at times, but it's short back and sides for life (well for as long as I have hair) even if I now have a not-so stark number 3 at the sides. I moved to New Cross in '96 and my regular trips to Andy's faded out. Nowadays I head to KRS Barber Station in Brockley where the clippers are wielded by barbers from the Turkish side of Cyprus. But Haircut Sir? is still going strong in SW2, where Andy passed on the business to his children.

So long Andy and thanks for the haircuts.

update: thanks to Andrew Brooks on Twitter for reminding me of Andy's standard introduction when somebody entered the shop - 'Cup of tea? Kettle’s there. Help yourself'. Of course if you did make one the etiquette was to offer one to Andy and anybody else queuing.

Andy in action (photo from Haircut Sir? facebook page)

London from punk to Blair EDITED BY JOE KERR & ANDREW GIBSON

Photographic Consultant Mike Seaborne

Update May 2024:

London: from Punk to Blair, edited by Andrew Gibson and Joe Kerr (2003) includes an overview of London hair styles which mentions Andy's:

 'Punk hairstyles continued to inspire looks throughout the next decade, providing the basis for the teased, dyed, androgynous black hair displayed in the Goth movement whose adherents haunted Camden Market and the infamous Batcave. By the late 1970s, the punk notion that a haircut could be a walking work of art on the streets of London was pushed even further by the New Romantic subculture, whose shock value rested on a deliberate confusion of gender seen in clubs such as Blitz and Taboo. Kevin Ryan of Antenna, Kensington Church Street, was responsible for some of the most exciting developments in male hairstyling of this period, and used extensions in his session work for singers such as Boy George. A whole host of retro references began to influence men's styles, such as the brushed flat top - Andy's Cut and Blow Dry of Tulse Hill was reputed to do the best flat top in London, followed closely by Atlas Associates of Fulham Road (Caroline Cox, White Hair Right Now: Styling the London Man)

July Days in London: Trump as Tyrant Monster and our opposition

I've been thinking again about the Trump phenomenon. As many have pointed out, plenty of other US  Presidents have presided over racist penal systems, nationalist sabre rattling and domination by corporations. Why is Trump any worse? Well partly because he represents an attempt to turn the clock back on some of the limited social progress that has been made in the past 50 years, in the process unleashing overt racism and legitimising the extreme right at home and abroad. But he also prompts  fear because of his very unpredictability  - he is not simply a smooth front man for capitalist business as usual, but someone who creates an impression that his personal power comes before everything, and that therefore nothing is sacred and nobody is safe. There is something almost archetypal here - he is like the 'tyrant monster' described by Joseph Campbell in 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' (1949):

'The figure of the tyrant-monster is known to the mythologies, folk traditions, legends, and even nightmares, of the world; and his characteristics are everywhere essentially the same. He is the hoarder of the general benefit. He is the monster avid for the greedy rights of "my and mine." The havoc wrought by him is described in mythology and fairy tale as being universal throughout his domain... The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world—no matter how his affairs may seem to prosper. Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world's messenger of disaster, even though, in his mind, he may entertain himself with humane intentions. Wherever he sets his hand there is a cry (if not from the housetops, then- more miserably—within every heart): a cry for the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence, will liberate the land'.

Yes I know that Campbell's work is problematic in many ways, but there's something to think about in this descrition of a type even if we have to be our own collective redeeming hero rather than waiting for a knight in shining armour to save us... And on the subject of our collective potential, here some pictures from last month's protests in London.
Donald Trump's visit saw one of the largest week day demonstrations in living memory on Friday 13th July 2018. In fact there were two major demos over the course of the day, the second and largest featuring as many as 250,000 people marching to Trafalgar Square.

The statue of liberty in Trafalgar Square:

Women dressed as characters from the Handmaid’s Tale with a sign declaring ‘Gilead steals our babies too’ alluding to the caging of children of migrants caught crossing the Mexican border:

Sound systems:

'we are all migrants'

'Latin American Migrants United Against Trump'



'Latin X Bloc - anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, feminist'

Frida Kahlo says 'Trump, get your nasty little hands off my people'

one of many marching bands

'Trumpets against Trump'



Harry Potter bloc? - Trump as dementor with the words ‘Expecto Patronum’ – the magic charm used by Potter against the dark forces of Voldemort (note Dumbledore quote on placard too)

The next day a far right 'welcome Trump to London' march from the US Embassy attracted an embarrassing turn out of less than 200. But it was followed by a Free Tommy Robinson demo in central London that included activists from the UK Independence Party, PEGIDA (Germany), Breitbart, Generation Identity, the Swedish Democrats (SD) and France’s Rassemblement National (formerly the Front National), among many others. Figures associated with Trump such as his former strategist Steve Bannon have supported Robinson (former leader of the English Defence League), indicating a dangerous convergence between elements close to the White House and the previously marginal global far right.

The master race drinking at The Lord Moon of the Mall (Wetherspoons pub) on Whitehalll

In size, this was a smaller protest than the Free Tommy demo in London a month before which ended in clashes with police (maybe 5000 compared with 15,000). The counter demo was also more effective, including an Anti Fascist Network mobilisation (perhaps 3000 anti-fascists out on the day after the 250,000 anti-Trump protest - compared with a few hundred the month before). Still nothing to be complacent about, even if the immediate UK far right grievance has now been resolved with Robinson being released from prison. Globally the far right have been emboldened by Trump's success and believe that history is swinging their way. Last time some of their Tyrant Monsters achieved power it did not end well.

'We are all anti-fascist' - at Jubilee Gardens on South Bank from where marchers moved to Whitehall.

'Defend London: defeat the fascist creep'



'Blake Bloc - Opposition is true friendship' - great William Blake inspired banner on anti-fascist demo