[alli55]

“Dad,” Maddie asks, “would you ever wear a wig?”

Lissie collapses in fits of giggles at the very idea of her father in a wig! I snicker and look at Phil. After 21 years together, I know him well, and I’m fairly sure he would just accept his hair loss gracefully. At least, I hope he would!

“Emma!” he says, looking at me, in mock anger. “Lissie I can understand, but I expect better from you!” he castigates.

“Sorry,” I snigger, “but, you have to admit, it is an amusing image!”

“Well, it’s not one you’re ever going to see!” he informs us. “Any of you!”

Thank goodness for that!

“Ohhh, go on Dad,” Lissie says, between giggles, “I’d love to see you in a wig!”

“I bet you would!” her father remarks.

The conversation is interrupted by the start of the theme music. All of us turn our attention back to the TV screen.

“Welcome back!” says Trixie. “This week on Britain’s Most Daring, our daredevils are getting a makeover. They’ve been dared to let their chosen makeover artist have a free hand, and we’ve already seen some interesting results!”

“Yes, we have!” Joe confirms. “It’s certainly been a bit hair-raising! Let’s see how wor next daredevil, Jaz, got on! Here’s Richie to tell us.”

Richie is wearing the same tatty jacket and jeans that we saw him in at the Midlands auditions. He is standing outside a hair salon on a typical urban high street.

“Jaz has come here to ask her regular hairdresser to help with the dare,” he informs us. “So, let’s take a look inside!”

Inside the salon, Jaz is sat in a standard hairdresser’s chair, in front of a mirror. Standing behind the chair is a young woman, similar in age to Jaz. Her initial greeting tells us that she is Jaz’s regular hairdresser.

“Hi, Jaz!” she says.

“Hello, Sasha!” Jaz replies

Sasha asks, “What’s it to be today? Your usual?”

“No! I want you to give me a new look!” Jaz tells her. “Anything you want!”

Sasha is clearly taken by surprise by this unexpected instruction from one of her regulars. “Okay,” she begins, before checking, “you really mean anything?”

“Yeah!” Jaz confirms. “Do whatever you think will look good!”

“Alright!” Sasha says, with great relish. “Let’s have a good look at you!”

Sasha spins the chair round so that Jaz is facing her. She takes a good, long look, and then uses her thumbs and forefingers to frame Jaz’s head. Throughout all this, Jaz is watching Sasha’s face, intrigued by the process. Using her fingers and a comb, Sasha sweeps Jaz’s hair into a new shape, before reconsidering and letting it return to its natural resting point. She takes a step back and looks Jaz in the eye.

“You’re not going to get mad with me, if you don’t like it, are you?!” she queries.

“No, of course I won’t!” Jaz assures her. “You just do what you want with it! Really!”

“Okay! I only asked, ’cos you’re more like a friend than a customer!” she tells Jaz. “So, I don’t want to do something that you hate!”

“You’re too good a hair stylist for that to happen!” Jaz enthuses.

“Aww, thanks!” Sasha smiles.

“And, anyway, I trust you completely! So, just do whatever you want!”

This final confirmation seems to be what Sasha needed, and Jaz’s compliments give her the encouragement to be bold in her ideas for Jaz’s new style. She sweeps Jaz’s hair across to one side and uses her other hand to lift the back off of Jaz’s shoulders. Satisfied with how it might look, she spins Jaz back around and sets about turning her idea into reality. Shots of Sasha washing, drying, cutting, and styling Jaz’s hair flash across the screen, until the dizzying images cease and Sasha spins Jaz around once more to take a look. She flicks a stray hair from off of Jaz’s forehead, takes a step back, and declares her task complete.

Where, before, Jaz’s brown hair had extended to a little below her shoulders, now it has been cut much, much shorter. The back ends at the top of her neck, whilst Sasha has given her a side-shave from just above her ears up to a point just below the top of her head. From there she has encouraged Jaz’s hair to flow to the opposite side of her head, with a front ‘curl’ falling down to her eyebrow. Sasha has completed the transformation by dyeing it platinum blonde.

“Oh, wow, Sasha,” exclaims Jaz, when she’s spun back around again and shown the full effect in the mirror, “that’s fantastic!” She extricates herself from the chair and gives Sasha a grateful hug.

There is rapturous applause as Jaz joins the two presenters. Trixie has a smile almost as wide as Jaz’s.

“That looks amazing!” she enthuses. “You’ll have to give me Sasha’s number!”

Jaz grins. The screen fills with a close-up of Sasha, in the audience. She, too, is grinning.

“The most important question: do you like it?” enquires Trixie.

“I absolutely love it!” Jaz enthuses. “It’s awesome!”

“Is it a style you’ve ever considered before?”

“No, I’d have never thought of having something like this in a million years!”

Trixie brings Sasha into the interview. “Sasha,” she asks, “what inspired you to create this amazing style for Jaz?”

“When she told me I could do anything,” Sasha says, “I just really wanted to repay her trust in me and give her something special. I’ve done her hair for years, and her style has always stayed the same. But I was convinced a proper short cut would suit her face, so I just came up with what you can see!”

“And why blonde?” questions Trixie.

“Blonde works much better on a cut like this,” Sasha opines. “Darker hair can look good when it’s cut short, but blonde really gives a much more dramatic effect!”

“It certainly does!” Trixie agrees. “When are you free?” She turns back to Jaz. “It works really well on you!” she comments, adding, “I’d love to see what she could do with mine!”

“Well, I think Trixie likes it!” says Joe. “But do the DAPAs?”

They seem to, judging by the 7 points they each award Jaz. Her total of 14 puts her into the lead, so far, this week.

“Brilliant! Really pleased!” she says of her score, and adds, “And I’m definitely keeping this style!”

“Let’s see our next daredevil!” Trixie says, as the applause for Jaz subsides. “Javid has the lowdown on how Tommy got on.”

As soon as we see the barber’s shop behind Javid, we know that Tommy has gone for a similar approach to his makeover that Jaz did for hers.

“Tommy has had the same haircut since he was a lad,” Javid informs us, “so it has taken a fair bit of courage for him to allow someone to have a free hand at giving him a different style. So, how will that go?”

We see a similar montage to the one we have recently watched, as Tommy is given a radical new haircut. Gone is the short-back-and-sides that he has always had, as the barber sets to work with the clippers on number 2. He does the whole of Tommy’s head, leaving him with a very short cut indeed. When he is shown the result, Tommy appears less than convinced. Nevertheless, he shakes the barber’s hand and smiles to the camera.

When he comes outside, he stops, feels his head, and tells Javid, “Blimey, my head feel’s cold!”

Tommy joins Joe and Trixie, and they wait for the applause to end.

“Tommy,” says Joe, “you looked a bit uncertain!”

“Yeah,” Tommy replies, “I’m used to my old style. This was a bit of a shock when I saw it!”

“How d’you like it now?”

“It’s okay!” says Tommy, in a tone of voice that isn’t fooling anyone.

“Are you going to keep it?”

“No,” Tommy admits, “I’ll let it grow back.”

“Okay,” Trixie interrupts, “let’s find out what the DAPAs make of it!”

Tommy gets a 7 from Dan, but only a 5 from Danielle, giving him a total of 12. He’s happy enough with that, knowing that he’s almost certain to be safe from the Dare-Off.

“I spent a day with Mia,” Trixie tells us, “and this is what we got up to.”

We see Trixie, in a fetching knee-length blue dress, topped with a navy cardigan. She is walking through a shopping precinct with Mia, wearing a jacket and jeans, at her side.

“Mia,” Trixie says, “what have you got in mind for your makeover?”

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, anyway,” she tells Trixie, “and this dare has given me the push I needed to get it done.”

What the ‘it’ is, we see when they stop in front of a tattoo parlour. The two women enter and walk up to the counter. The assistant, a middle-aged man with a goatee beard and arms covered in artwork, looks up.

“Hello,” he greets them, “how can I help?”

“I’d like a tattoo,” Mia states, fairly obviously.

“Did you have anything in particular in mind?” he asks.

“I’d like you to do me one that you think will look good on me,” she tells him, “and it has to be visible.”

He tries to get more of an idea of the sort of thing she might like, but Mia, realising that she mustn’t restrict him in any way, won’t say any more.

“I’m not sure I can help you!” he tells her, after getting nowhere with his questioning about her preference of design.

“Why?” she asks.

“You haven’t given me anything to go on, that’s why!”

She pushes him, asking, “Well, can’t you just do one that you think will look good?”

He decides there is no reasoning with her, so turns his attention to Trixie.

“Can you tell your friend here that getting a tattoo is not some sort of game!” he says to the bemused presenter. “You can’t just wash it off if you don’t like it!”

“Well, obviously!” Mia interjects. “I’m not stupid!”

Ignoring her, the man tells Trixie, “I don’t think she’s thought this through. Maybe it’s best if you come back when she has!”

“What d’you think she is, my Mum or something?” Mia snaps, indignantly. “I know what I want: I want a tattoo! And I want you to do it, now!”

“Perhaps, if you show me some designs, I can give you an idea of the sort of thing that she might like,” suggests Trixie, trying to defuse the situation.

The assistant agrees, and, presumably, Trixie gives him sufficient help for him to be happy to give Mia a tattoo like she’s demanding, because we see him setting up his equipment. He has decided to give her a design on her lower arm, since she asked for it to be visible. We see a series of clips of him at work on her arm, as Trixie watches on with interest. As the design is progressing, it is difficult to tell what it is, but one thing is clear: it is pretty large!

When he has finished, Mia holds her arm up to the camera to show us the result. On the inside of her arm, from her wrist to her elbow joint, she has a floral design. There is a central flower head, in a vibrant yellow, surrounded above and to the sides by leaves. Below the main flower are two smaller pink flowers, and the design is completed by a number of beads hanging from lines that stretch across between the two smaller flower heads.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it!” she says to the assistant, apparently still narked at his earlier reluctance to do what she wanted.

Trixie apologises for Mia’s rudeness, adding, “You’ve done a really good job! I think it looks brilliant! Thank you, so much!”

In the studio, Mia shows off her tattoo.

“Wow!”, exclaims Joe. “That’s an impressive piece of work!”

“I really like it!” Mia tells him.

“Have you had any comments from friends and family?” Trixie asks.

“My Dad hates it,” Mia confesses, “but everyone else likes it. Even my Mum!”

“I wonder whether the DAPAs do,” Joe says.

The DAPAs do like it. Dan gives Mia 8 points and Danielle awards 7, putting Mia into the lead with a total of 15. She smiles and blows the DAPAs a kiss. Dan catches it, whilst Danielle looks at him with a stern expression on her face.

“That’s our new leader, Mia!” Trixie exclaims. “Join us after the break for more Britain’s Most Daring! See you soon!”

“Dad …?” begins Maddie.

“No, you are not getting a tattoo!” her father second-guesses.

“Oh!” she says, disappointment etched onto her face.

The trouble is, it’s less than two months to her birthday, her eighteenth birthday; then, there’ll be no stopping her!