From bedsits to Berkeley Square: Adee Phelan’s story
Adee Phelan was living in a bedsit before he discovered a talent for haircutting that led him to work with celebrities such as David Beckham, Liza Minnelli and Marco Pierre White.
It’s pretty mad how I got into hairdressing. I was born in Ireland, one of nine kids, my dad was a farmer. I left home young, and had been living in bedsits ever since. I was working as a painter and decorator in Lee Stafford’s salon, and he said, ‘Why don’t you become a hairdresser? You’d be good at it.’ The first haircut I did was one of his models, I was covered in paint. A year later, I won the Men’s Hairdresser of the Year 2000 at the British Hairdressing Awards, which is like the hair Oscars. I had a big speech lined up but when I won, I got up on stage and said, “Two years ago I was living in an £18 a week bedsit eating meatballs out of a tin, and here I am in The Grosvenor drinking fine champagne – what a great fucking country we live in.” And 1,800 people stood up. It was black tie
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but I was wearing my Liverpool shirt with a white Prada suit, it was the first suit I’d ever owned. I first cut Beckham’s hair in 2002.
He was the most famous person on the planet at the time and his hair was even more famous than him, so it was a massive introduction to the hair world. The biggest learning curve I ever had was doing this Police sunglasses shoot with him. I love football and I was working with this guy, so I was buzzing. We were in the VIP room and I picked up one of the advertising posters and asked David to sign it for me. Afterwards, his PR girl said to me, ‘that wasn’t so cool.’ It was quite embarrassing really. I was just a cheeky chappy, but I learnt that day to always be professional. The reality show,
The Salon happened the same year. It was crazy. After living in bedsits all my life, suddenly I was on TV, earning what seemed like a fortune to me. I had clubs calling me up offering me money to drink in their VIP room. I couldn’t really believe all this was happening to me, it was nuts but I thought, why not just grab it with both hands? You only live once. I got
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