13th November - How much should a Skinfade Cost?

The best I've ever had, by an absolute distance, is at Doc Barnet in Westfield. £30, and they'll take care of your facial hair, too. The service is speedy, but doesn't compromise on quality, and the barbers don't excessively gas on about absolute rubbish to you the whole time. They largely allow that period of silence to sit nicely in the air. The worst I've had, are the local Turkish barbers near my Mum's house, which I've only ever used twice, but the first time they cut it far too short and made my head look like a tennis ball. The second time, they boxed off the top until I looked like Ivan Drago.

Then, of course, there's the mid-range tier, a place in Oxford where - when done correctly - can look brilliant. There's a Polish fella in there with a big beard who absolutely smashes it every time. He does stink quite heavily of smoke, and his conversational topics are violently misogynistic to say the least, but his skin fade skills are next level. At £20, the cut is more than fairly priced, but there's a danger here... The small Iranian fella in the corner. Sometimes, he's the only barber on duty in there, and when he cuts your barnet, he butchers it completely, and cuts your facial hair so short that it resembles a thin pencil-like strip around your chin-line. Vile. The Oxford Barbers is a real lottery. 

Yesterday, I went to the Persian place around the corner from me, for the first ever time. The cut itself is tidy, but not really what I'd class as a true 'fade', it needs to be cut far closer to the skin. But most horrifyingly of all, the total was priced at an eye-watering £33. This bombshell came to me shortly after my pal Lewis had informed me that the Peter Kay tickets he'd just secured were set at a pant-shitting total of £75 per person. I'm not quite sure how I managed to spunk away almost £110 on an hour of comedy and a hair trim but one thing I DO know....

... Is that £33 is far too much for ANY skin-fade.