The celebrity hairdresser with stories to dye for: From a grumpy Mrs Thatcher to Madonna’s wedding day roots and salon gossip with Diana... Daniel Galvin’s colourful tales will make your hair stand on end
Down among the designer shampoos, trouble is bubbling in the House of Galvin. At the age of 77, patriarch Daniel Galvin OBE leads one of the most successful dynasties in the world of hair; he is the head of a glossy family empire that includes four salons, dozens of product lines and a star-studded clientele that has included every famous blonde you can think of, from Margaret Thatcher to Madonna, Sharon Stone to Princess Diana and beyond.
At one point Galvin employed all three of his hairdresser children, Louise, 53, Daniel Jr, 51, and James, 46. Yet there have been waves. Against his father’s wishes, Daniel Jnr left the family business years ago to join a rival salon, before setting up on his own.
Louise is still with the company, but mystery surrounds James, who left the company after the first lockdown last year and ceased to be a Galvin company director in June 2020. Father and son have not spoken since.
![At the age of 77, patriarch Daniel Galvin OBE leads one of the most successful dynasties in the world of hair; he is the head of a glossy family empire that includes four salons, dozens of product lines and a star-studded clientele that has included every famous blonde you can think of, from Margaret Thatcher to Madonna, Sharon Stone to Princess Diana and beyond](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/16/22/45539219-9796611-image-a-11_1626469599032.jpg)
At the age of 77, patriarch Daniel Galvin OBE leads one of the most successful dynasties in the world of hair; he is the head of a glossy family empire that includes four salons, dozens of product lines and a star-studded clientele that has included every famous blonde you can think of, from Margaret Thatcher to Madonna, Sharon Stone to Princess Diana and beyond
![Galvin has also been the go-to hairdresser for younger celebrities such as Adele, pictured](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/16/22/45539215-9796611-image-a-12_1626469686078.jpg)
Galvin has also been the go-to hairdresser for younger celebrities such as Adele, pictured
‘James served this company well for 28 years. I am grateful to him and wish him nothing but the best in whatever he decides to do next,’ says Daniel Snr today.
James was equally reticent to discuss the split, reportedly so bad that he plans to change his surname by deed poll and rid himself of the Galvin shadow for ever. ‘Who told you that?’ he said, although he did not deny the rumour. ‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ he said when we contacted him. ‘I’m waiting out the pandemic before my next move. I’m in no hurry.’
Whatever next? Sometimes life with the glamorous Galvins feels like an episode of Succession, Game Of Thrones and the Kardashians, all rolled into one. They fight, they make up, they love each other, they can’t agree.
Daniel Snr’s wife Mavis, a former hairdresser herself, has banned all hairdressing talk from the five-bedroom family home in Elstree, Hertfordshire, where the children grew up, complete with its swimming pool and half-acre garden. They were all so cute and attractive that Mavis, Louise and the two boys were used in a 1970s advertising campaign for Lyons Maid ice cream — the ultimate sweet treat!
Meanwhile, in addition to Daniel Snr’s starry clientele, Louise’s A-list clients include Sophie Dahl and Patsy Kensit, Daniel Jnr tends to Kylie Minogue and Kelly Brook while James — the only hair stylist amid this trio of celebrated colourists — has snipped the locks of Patsy Palmer among others. What do all these women have in common? Great hair.
Collectively, the Galvins are beautiful people who make the beautiful people even more beautiful. Individually there are times when they are metaphorically tearing each other’s hair out, perhaps like many successful family enterprises.
Yet here, in this interview, Daniel Snr reveals for the first time the personal challenges he has overcome while keeping his multi-million-pound business at the top of the hair world — and his fractious family together.
![Princess Diana pictured leaving Galvin's Mayfair salon in 1994, was a regular customer](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/16/22/45539221-9796611-image-m-14_1626469743389.jpg)
Princess Diana pictured leaving Galvin's Mayfair salon in 1994, was a regular customer
When Daniel Jnr left in rancorous circumstances in 1994, Daniel Snr found himself ‘sobbing at night’ and was admitted to a North London clinic later that year. ‘Dad went nuts,’ is what Daniel Jnr said at the time.
Back then, newspapers reported that the family boss was suffering from stress — but that wasn’t quite true, either.
‘I was in the clinic for drink,’ he admits for the first time today. ‘I am an alcoholic. I don’t drink any more and I haven’t drunk for over 20 years, but back then it was a problem.’
At the peak of his powers, with famous women queuing up to have him colour their hair and paying around £300 for the privilege, Daniel Snr’s life was slipping out of control — but never to the point where he was tending to Princess Diana’s hair while half cut himself.
‘I never drank during the day,’ he says. ‘I can’t really remember but I don’t think it affected my day to day life, I just carried on. I was a functioning alcoholic, my family knew, my wife supported me. But I had to change my life. I couldn’t carry on that way.’
At that time Daniel Jnr was back in the family fold, working alongside his father in the family salon, but the pair of them were still on icy non-speaking terms. Daniel Jnr had experienced his own addiction problems, having beaten his £1,000-a-day cocaine habit with a six-month spell in an American health clinic.
Trapped in his own private cycle of abuse, Daniel Snr was drinking a bottle of wine after work each day, then often carrying on drinking at home. Things got so bad that in 2003 daughter Louise finally got him into rehab, into the Clouds facility in Wiltshire.
![Margaret Thatcher became a client when she became Leader of the Opposition. He was responsible for changing her hair colour from ¿barmaid blonde to a more demure shade so that she would be taken more seriously¿](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/16/22/45539227-9796611-image-a-15_1626469801331.jpg)
Margaret Thatcher became a client when she became Leader of the Opposition. He was responsible for changing her hair colour from ‘barmaid blonde to a more demure shade so that she would be taken more seriously’
‘It was just unbelievable, amazing,’ he recalls. ‘There was no private room, no colour TV, nothing like that. It was really down to earth. You didn’t mess around. One week you were the cleaner, the next week you were washing the dishes. I was there for six weeks.’
To his great credit, Daniel Snr came out of the clinic, joined AA (‘a fabulous programme’) and hasn’t touched a drop since. And despite the problems father and son have both had in this area, he doesn’t believe that addiction runs in the family.
‘I think it is more the pressure of the job,’ he says. ‘I’ve always been one of the workers. I’m only the boss if something goes wrong.
‘You know when they were little, Louise wanted to be a PR, Daniel wanted to be a journalist and James wanted to be a racing driver. We all ended up in the business together and perhaps that was not a good idea, but we loved it and if they are doing their own thing now, then I think that is great.’
Galvin Snr is a third generation hairdresser who left school unable to read or write, started sweeping up hair where his father worked and ended up the kind of rich man who sent his three children to private schools, bought properties abroad and drove classic cars such as Bentleys and Rolls-Royces.
‘Dad had a tough upbringing. There wasn’t much money and I think that is what’s given him his drive,’ says Louise. ‘The fear of poverty informs everything he does.’
When he opened his first salon in London in 1978, 17-hour days were not unusual, and then he would take the towels home for Mavis to wash.
![He was worried in advance of Madonna's marriage to Guy Ritchie because she would need 'her roots doing'. Photographs showed the dark hair which suddenly became popular](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/16/22/45539223-9796611-image-a-16_1626469873742.jpg)
He was worried in advance of Madonna's marriage to Guy Ritchie because she would need 'her roots doing'. Photographs showed the dark hair which suddenly became popular
He has an OBE for services to hairdressing — but, frankly, he should be given a sainthood for what he has done for women.
To understand Daniel Snr’s contribution you have to understand that before he came along in the 1960s, with his hair swatches and his home-mixed tints and his passion for colour, the options for women who wanted to be lighter or blonder ranged from the bleached-bottle blonde to the baked poodle, with little nuance in between.
You were either Diana Dors or you were not. End of. If you wanted to be blonde, you had to have all the natural colour stripped out of your hair with 20-volume peroxide mixed with drops of ammonia, then a toner colour applied on top.
Highlights meant a rubber cap stippled with holes, through which strands of your hair were pulled with a metal hook, then painted with a blue paste that made your eyes water.
Enter Daniel with his brickwork method of highlights which stopped the stripes overnight, his method of wrapping strands in tinfoil, and of using more than one hair colour. It was a sensation.
Twiggy was given her famous blonde crop. Bond girl Barbara Bach and Jean Shrimpton were early devotees, while over the years his team hand-painted balayage streaks onto Adele’s hair (she loved it, she would come in and say, ‘Can I have my finger painting, please’), while he tended to Nicole Kidman’s halo of rose gold curls and turned Margaret Thatcher from a ‘barmaid blonde to a more demure shade so that she would be taken more seriously’.
Mrs Thatcher first became his client when she was Leader of the Opposition and he remembers her as someone who wanted everything done yesterday. ‘She wasn’t best pleased when told that her colour correction would have to be done in stages,’ he says. ‘It was terrifying.’
![Daniel Galvin, pictured, said Princess Diana came to him for more than a decade where she was transformed from light brown kindergarten teacher to blonde bombshell and superstar](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/16/22/45539217-9796611-image-m-18_1626470049249.jpg)
Daniel Galvin, pictured, said Princess Diana came to him for more than a decade where she was transformed from light brown kindergarten teacher to blonde bombshell and superstar
Perhaps Daniel’s most famous client was Princess Diana, who came to him for over ten years in a period when he changed her from light brown kindergarten teacher to blonde bombshell global superstar.
‘She was a lovely person, a breath of fresh air,’ he says.
He has now been a hairdresser for over 60 years and one of the many remarkable things about him is that he is still working.
While most of his contemporaries from the Sixties, those big hair names such as Vidal Sassoon, Leonard of Mayfair and Raymond ‘Mr Teasy Weasy’ Bessone have all gone to the great salon in the sky, Daniel is the last man standing. His colour recall is tremendous. When we are discussing redheads, he can remember the shades that he used on his famous clients.
‘For Lulu it was Miss Clairol 43 Sun Bronze, Cilla Black was Miss Clairol 44 Coppertone, Kiki Dee was number 45 Sparkling Sherry. The Clairols were the best in the world for reds back then.’
In his eighth decade, he is still tending to his clients in his state-of-the-art London flagship in Marylebone, three or four appointments a day, three days a week; still weaving his highlights sorcery, still waving his magic colouring wand, still turning Minnie Mouses into blonde Madonnas.
Daniel remembers when Madonna married Guy Ritchie in a Scottish castle back in 2000, and how he was freaking out as the wedding day approached. ‘Because I knew she needed her roots doing,’ he says. ‘I was waiting and waiting. It was getting closer and closer to the big day but she didn’t make an appointment.’
And what happened then, I cry! For I could talk hair with Daniel until the cows come home, get a gloss shampoo and have some lovely honey lowlights streaked through their cowlicks.
‘In the end she got married with the black roots and it became a fashion, because that is what Madonna did, you see. She was one of the chicest. People followed her, whatever she did. And after the wedding, she let her roots grow out even more.’
One can see this must have been a worrying trend for the king of colour, the man who wants ‘thank God for roots’ as his epitaph. He feels the same way about Madonna’s roots as he does about the lockdown trend for women to ditch the dye and embrace their natural grey hair.
‘Yes, yes, it can be lovely,’ he says, looking completely aghast. ‘But you have to be the right shade of grey. I would say that most grey women look better with a bit of dye.’
Most?
‘About 99.9 per cent.’
Today, he has embraced his own grey and is neatly coiffed, with his perfect teeth in a scalloped smile, his fingernails painted with a clear gloss and neatly manicured — he is thrillingly old school.
A lifetime of bending over heads has left him with terrible lumbar problems — two of the discs in his lower back have fused, while he ‘blew my knees’ running marathons. Like many alcoholics, he substituted one addiction for another, replacing his dependency on booze with an addiction to running. ‘For six years I was running 60 hours a week,’ he says. He has run five marathons and now sometimes has to wear a supportive back bandage in the salon.
Yet age cannot wither him, nor stop his passion and drive for colouring hair and making women more beautiful. He is delighted to be back after lockdown, where his salon has been kitted out to the highest Covid standards, complete with a filtration system that changes the air over 300 times a day and cost him a fortune.
‘You have to invest to keep going,’ he says. His famous attention to detail has not escaped him. He casts an eye over the pale stone floor, which has been steam cleaned.
‘Look at the grouting. It has come up lovely,’ he says, and goes off to greet his next client.
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