‘Mary Queen of the inside story. Top hairdresser John peers and his rochdale salon were propelled into the limelight, following their recent appearance on BBC2 series ‘Mary Queen of Shops’. The series followed ‘retail guru’ Mary portas as she shared tricks of the trade with failing businesses. Style caught up with John peers to discuss life after Mary’s makeover!
How did you become involved with ‘Queen of Shops’? a friend from rochdale Town Centre Management had been in touch with Mary portas to see if she would come to rochdale and do a consultation about why there are so many empty shops. I believe that the council turned her down because her consultation fee was £15,000 a day! following that, Mary was doing a talk at the neC for Wella, infront of 500 people. after the talk, she was interviewed by various magazines and she asked them if they knew of any hairdressers in rochdale. She ended up getting numbers for me and a guy called freddy in rawtenstall, who I taught. freddy turned her down because he said he couldn’t handle having Mary portas there for a week! But I said bring it on, I’d love to do it! all I focussed
on was that the programme was an hourlong, on BBC2 on a Monday night, directly after Coronation Street’s finished. I thought it was bound to do us some good. I wanted rochdale, as well as the salon, to get a ‘push’ from it. Do you think it was a fair reflection of Rochdale? no I don’t think it was. They could have focussed on better parts of the town centre, such as our shopping centres, but it’s all in the edit! They wanted to show the negative, before the positive. What impact has ‘Queen of Shops’ had on the salon? having Mary portas advice for four weeks has been valuable and nine million people watched the programme, which must be a good thing. The experience made us think and it made us spend. We want to make sure that when clients visit the salon they stay with us. We’ve installed coal burning stoves, which look fantastic. We’ve also put in a separate Barber’s shop, where men can come in for a shave too. and everyone has a uniform now. It’s made us look at ourselves more.
What was it like watching yourself and your staff on tv? I loved it. I mean, there were bits where I watched it back and thought why did I do that! There was one part where I cut a girl’s hair and they edited the programme to make it seem as though the consultation was really quick, when it was actually 15 minutes. They said the hairstyle wasn’t what the client wanted, but she was actually really happy with her hair - she’s still raving about it on her facebook page! on the Monday after the programme aired, I took the family to White Water Valley. It was quite funny because we were stopped 12 times by people wanting photos & autographs. My kids thought it was hilarious and couldn’t wait to tell their friends at school.