The Xtra Diary - Barber Haim Cohem 'cheesed off' at being left out of GOSH charity

CAN you patent a haircut? It’s hard to imagine how you can claim exclusive rights over the Mohawk, the mullet or the shaved step (not that you’d ever want to be associated with that Scissor Hands aberration).

But such questions aren’t a million miles away from a problem a Covent Garden barber friend of Diary is experiencing.
Haim Cohen (pictured) who has worked at Life Barber in Drury Lane for 20 years, is more than a tad cheesed off that he has been left off a long list of hairdressers backing a charity appeal for Great Ormond Street Hospital.

He says his idea of using hair salons for free haircuts to raise money for the children’s hospital has been used by the big boys of the snip industry who are now able to enjoy the publicity such an appeal brings.

Haim lost his 10-year-old son, Davide, to a rare form of cancer in 2008 and thinks he should have been asked to front the HAIRraising campaign for more operating theatres because the industry cottoned on to the idea following his story published in the West End Extra last October.

Great Ormond Street says both campaigns are separate and that a big name of the industry came up with it independently.

Haim told Diary: “This was my idea. It’s not a coincidence that these big celebrity hairdressers come along and do this after my appeal.
“I support what they’re doing. It’s for a good cause, of course, but I think someone should have come forward to ask us to be a part of it.

“We are a small business and it’s unfair that they get all the publicity that comes from a big celebrity campaign like this without acknowledging where it came from.”
Whatever the event, it is important to remember that celebrity-fronted charity campaigns are not always a case of prizes for all.

Cleaning up with £1.2m

You missed a bit! Unfortunately this caption competition entry isn’t a daily occurrence in Oxford Street.
The chambermaids were out scrubbing the streets on Friday as part of a photocall for the New West End Company, who are celebrating a £1.2million investment in cleaning the streets  in the area.

The company represents retailers in Oxford Street, Bond Street and Regent Street.
Antony Smith, chairman of Oxford Street Management Group said: “Oxford Street welcomes over 200 million visitors a year and it is a great challenge to try to keep the UK’s favourite high street clean.

Our spring clean brings local retailers and hotels together with the hundreds of people who clean Oxford Street every day. Today is a celebration of our collective efforts to keep the world’s busiest shopping street sparkling.”

City kids are ‘world class’

That totem of British high culture the Albert Hall has been having a hard time of it lately.
But those pesky licensing officers and neighbourhood stuck-in-the-muds didn’t have anything to moan about the other night when the famous venue played host to an event that will be talked about in the playgrounds and staffrooms for months to come.

The World in Our City saw more than 1,500 schoolchildren from Queen’s Park to Pimlico come together to form a one-off orchestra. They were guided by music maestros from the BBC and the Royal College of Music and won a round of standing ovations that the cast of the latest West End hit would be proud of.

Followers of town hall politics will know that the leader of the Labour group, Paul Dimoldenberg, often wears a wry smile when lampooning his more numerous rivals in the Marylebone chamber.
But he was beaming from ear to ear last week because his daughter was playing the clarinet in the orchestra.
One of many proud parents in Westminster!