A new hair cut can beat plastic surgery - andrew barton

January has just flown by and after a really relaxing break at Christmas I've been really straight back into it this month.

At the start of the year, I worked on loads of shoots, including a six-page beauty story that is about to come out in Marie Claire, and I have also been doing a lot of work with Melinda Messenger.

Melinda is a client of mine and, as she is on Dancing on Ice at the moment, she has been doing lots of press interviews and obviously needs to look at her fantastic best.

More recently I've been really tied up with filming the new series of 10 Years Younger, which starts on Channel 4 next Wednesday.

It's been great fun filming it and the new format - which has two women; one who is having surgery and one who isn't - really showcases great hair.

I am not anti-surgery by any means, but I don't think we should underestimate the radical difference that just changing the hair - be it the shape, length of colour - can make.

This is where we as hairdressers have really got to take some responsibility in what we do every day. We must bring out the best in our clients rather than just going through the motions on auto-pilot, which I think some hairdressers do.

When I speak to a lot of women they tell me that the one thing that they really want is a transformation that suits them; it is no good it just being something that happens on makeover shows on the television, it has to be the reality of going into a hair salon.

I've also had the launch of a new range of products in the Shiny Happy Hair family, which will be on the shelves in the spring.

After months and months in the research and development stages it's great to get to the launch and I hope they enjoy the same 'phenomenal' [as Asda described it] success as the rest of the range.

Next up for me is a shoot for a consumer hair brand in South Africa. It's going to be on location and, unlike shooting still ads, there's no scope for retouching.

It will be a lot of hard work and a lot of standing around on set but I'm not complaining.  It's great that my diary is so full.

We keep on hearing about redundancies and they have started to filter through to the hair industry too, so I'm just grateful for any work that comes my way. Bring it on!