Beauty school cop outs: jamilla paul’s diary

Rochdale salon owner Jamilla Paul is fast becoming a familiar face to the nation, mentoring the cast of new reality MTV show Beauty School Cop Outs. In an HJi exclusive, Jamilla is sharing the secrets from the set – read the latest installment of her show diary below… "Is it mental that my favourite part of the whole MTV Beauty School Cop Outs show is the aerial views of my salon? I just can’t believe that MTV filmed it. It’s there forever; my life and work captured on film from above. I’m really sorry for gushing, but I love it. That’s one in the eye for the bank manager who wouldn’t lend me the money for my first salon 15 years ago. "Another one in his eye was my victory last Friday at the Rochdale Business Awards – I was named Business Woman of the Year. I wasn’t really thinking about it much, not with HJ's British Hairdressing Awards coming up and the MTV show dominating every conversation in the salon. I’ve also got a series of education seminars for new clients booked for Wella Professionals and the first one was last night  in Brighton with Sean Dawson. I did two models; the first using Illumina and the second Colour ID and I spent most of last week thinking about that.  You can see how I might be distracted. "I almost didn’t make it to the awards. My mum had a fall just as we were about to leave for the ceremony and had to go to hospital. Fortunately, it was before the Friday evening rush hour and the doctors had her back on her feet so quickly we made actually it just as they announced the winner. "I’m kinda getting used to seeing my name in the paper. I was featured in Reveal magazine with the BSCO cast a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately some clients told me so I was able to rush out and get a copy. A massive picture! It’s simply something my salon way up in the north would never get normally so the publicity I’d hoped for is coming. Let’s hope it turns into bums on seats. "The millions of BSCO viewers around the world couldn’t care less about my win or my salon. The huge personalities dominate the show and it’s inevitable that the constructive part, the tasks and the learning, will be side-lined. So the focus in the tattooing task was Sacha’s vegetarianism. In the massage section, it was Scarlett’s boobs. "I was determined to protect hairdressing and blocked any suggestion the hairdressing task should be done on real people. They hadn’t even held any scissors at this point. Before letting them loose on clients, I had to see if any of them were even creative. But what to do instead? It had to make compelling TV and keep the production company happy. Enter the brightly coloured wigs – highly visual, if a little difficult for their level. "Frustratingly, only Tara and Calvin took it seriously. And while the finishes weren’t that great, I saw that both have that ‘something’ needed to be hairdressers. I’ll keep an eye on those two. "I was disappointed they didn’t show one of my favourite bits that we spent hours filming, which was when we worked with Sacha on her confidence. She’s a sensitive little soul. I brought in a load of wigs and she had a great time trying them on and being photographed by David Marsh, who runs the Picture Lounge on the fourth floor of my salon. You may have noticed her pink one on the night out. She really blossomed. "I feel so strongly that our industry makes an important contribution to society; making people feel better about themselves. We are needed, especially when some guys (mentioning no names, Jeremy) make girls feel bad about expecting to be treated with respect. "Still, how can you condense 10 hours a day of filming for six to seven days into 45 minutes and still retain everything? You can’t."