Ian McMillan: A cut price guide to the barbershop economy

I found a 20p piece on the pavement today and as I bent to pick it up like an oystercatcher on a beach I thought “this is the kind of money I understand. Free money. Money that, if it doesn’t grow on trees, appears on Tarmac. That’s the kind of supply-side economy I can relate to, the kind that comes from a hole in a pocket or a too-quickly-opened purse”.

No oystercatcher bends that slowly, I realise.

Recently, though, I took myself on one side and had a stern word with myself. I may even have raised my voice and threatened myself with the back of my hand. In these harsh monetary times it’s up to us all to try to understand the world of dosh and moolah; ignorance of the pound is no excuse when the world is governed by what walks into your bank account and what sprints out. So, over the past couple of days I’ve been sitting on the settee and thinking hard, sometimes scribbling in a notebook, sometimes staring into space and then clicking my fingers and nodding.

It’s what I imagine economists do. If people try to talk to me I look a bit put out and whine “Can’t you see I’m thinking deeply about the current fiscal situation?” and they retreat, probably making alternatively inflationary and deflationary gestures at me behind my back. I’m now pleased to announce to my legions of readers that I now understand economics, and I understand the economic situation so completely that I’ve even come up with an idea that students will come to call “McMillan’s Haircut and Window-Cleaning Theory of the Failure of Late Capitalism”. Trips off the tongue, no?

Well, I’m dying to explain. A couple of years ago, I wrote a radio play that featured a window-cleaner and I put in the script that he charged £3 for cleaning the windows. The producer, a gentleman from Leeds, thought this was a misprint and looked genuinely shocked to his Leeds core when I told him it wasn’t. “Three pounds?” he said, like Peter Kay doing his Cheesecake? Cheese? Cake? Routine. “Three pounds?” I got a bit defensive.

“Well, we’ve got quite a few windows,” I said in what somebody once described as my “fruity North-country brogue” like I was a combination of healthy snack and comfortable shoe. He still looked aghast. “We pay 10 quid,” he said.

Now it was my turn to widen my eyes and let my mouth flap open like a trapdoor. “Ten pounds for your windows doing? You could buy new windows for that in Barnsley! And doors!” Now, I know I was exaggerating for effect, but not much. You wouldn’t get the doors.

We both talked for a while about the relative prices of window-cleaning and in the end he prevailed because he said, probably with some justification, that no Radio 4 listeners would believe it’s only three pounds to have your windows done. And, as I said, that was a couple of years ago. And ours are still three quid. I’ve not seen him for a while so I don’t know how much he pays these days, but I bet it’s not gone down. I’m going to get some ladders and a bucket and move to Leeds!

Having dealt with the window-cleaning aspect of McMillan’s Theory, let me turn to the haircut side of the equation. I recently went for my hair cutting in York. It cost me £13 and as I paid the barber asked, just out of interest, how much I normally paid. “Well, I come from Barnsley,” I said, and he nodded a sage nod that meant “Say no more!” So I told him about Mad Geoff and the fact that he’s charged a fiver for a trim for years, since my hair was dark, in fact.

He rang my Barnsley money as quickly as he could into his York till before I changed my mind and asked for my quiff sticking back on. “You couldn’t charge that round here, they’d think you were daft,” he said.

I’ve paid £10.50 in Leeds and I’ve seen barbers round Barnsley that charge £4 or even £3 and in each location they think it’s a fair price.

You can tell the economic health of a place by the scalps and the windows and the normality of how the price feels, depending on your postcode. I’ve never had my hair cut in Richmond in Surrey but I bet they charge more than Geoff. And more than that place in Leeds. And more than that place in York. And yet it’s still the same hair, still the same head.

McMillan’s Haircut and Window Cleaning Theory of the Failure of Late Capitalism: easy, isn’t it? The money follows the scissors and the chamois leathers. And the solution? Get your hair cut by a Barnsley window-cleaner. Three pounds to you.