Judging live hair show a challenge

Yesterday I had my first experience of judging a live hair show - and what an experience it was. Redken asked me to judge the Birmingham regional final of its Urban Rap Talent Show at the NEC. The competition was split into two categories - Urban Talent Style Innovator and Urban Talent Color Genius.At first I felt grossly under-qualified, sitting alongside fellow judges Martyn Gayle, James Davis, from Leo Bancroft, London, and Tony Woods, of Ego Hair in Southsea - all experienced and charismatic hairdressers. With much encouragement from my new hairdressing friends, I relaised that my experience as a journalist offered the panel an extended perspective, and started to look forward to my judging debut. Standing backstage ready to make an entrance in front of a capacity audience the nerves kicked in again. Then I looked around at the young contestants waiting nervously with their models and realised that I had a much easier job than them. The standard of cuts and colour in both categories were incredibly impressive and it was an honour to take part in a competition that will almost certainly discover some stars of the future. Other stars of the future were amongst those recognised at the Francesco Group's awards ceremony on Sunday, where I had the honour to hand out trophies to some of the group's outstanding trainees. The support from their teams and from the entire 600-strong crowd, brought home just how passionate people are about this industry - and both events helped me realise just how much talent there is out there.