Yahoo News Kirkcudbright's Maurice Halliday shares his story in Galloway People
He’s cut, teased, curled and styled the hair of thousands of clients over the years with flair and meticulous attention to detail.
And although Maurice Halliday laid down his hairdresser’s scissors 18 years ago, he still owns the classy salon down the stair from his and wife Anne’s beautifully furnished flat at St Mary Street in Kirkcudbright.
The shop is the last of three he once ran in Galloway that, I soon learn, were preceded by two others in Kilmarnock.
Maurice still cuts a striking figure – he turns 78 on June 24 – and exudes a certain joie de vivre and confidence as we chat over the coffee and biscuits.
In early childhood Castle Douglas was his home so he could be described as a Galloway man but, he tells me, he grew up in Kilmarnock in the fifties and sixties, the town then a bustling centre of industry.
His father John, Maurice begins, came from Leggatecheek near Ringford, a couple of miles out of the village on the road to Laurieston, and during World War Two was in the Royal Artillery with the Chindits in Burma, where a long attritional battle against the Imperial Japanese Army and tropical diseases took a terrible toll on the troops.
“My father chain smoked for five years to keep the leeches off him,” he says.
“After the war he married Margaret Black from Kilmarnock, a relative of the folk who owned Black’s Bar in the town.”
Maurice relates how the newly-weds set up home in Castle Douglas and soon Margaret was expecting – but he was not destined to be born locally.
“My mother returned to her mother in Kilmarnock for my birth, which was customary in those days,” he explains with a smile.
“I came into the world on June 24, 1946 and after my birth we returned to Castle Douglas and a house in Queen Street.
“My father was a joiner with McNaught and also an auxiliary fireman.
“His mum and dad, my grandparents, stayed at Leggatecheek at Ringford and managed the Queenshill Estate sawmill.
“We moved to the new houses in Cairnsmore Road in Castle Douglas sometime between 1948-50 with my newborn baby brother, Jeff.
“I remember how the railway ran parallel to Cairnsmore Road, and as kids we collected coal spilt from the steam trains.”
Continuing his story of childhood, Maurice tells me the family moved to Kilmarnock when his father joined Kilmarnock Burgh Police Force, which later became part of Strathclyde Police.
“Our first house was a room and a kitchen flat, sharing a landing toilet,” he recalls.
“There was no bath, only a kitchen sink.
“Then we moved to a new police house in Onthank, a council estate then being built on the outskirts of town.
“Trips back to see my grandparents at Ringford were made by bus from Kilmarnock with the first stop being a change of bus in Ayr, then on to Carsphairn.
“You had to wait at the Salutation Hotel in Carsphairn with a cup of tea for the bus from Castle Douglas, and the drivers swapped over.
“At Castle Douglas there was another change for the bus to Ringford, and then a two-mile walk to Leggatecheek.”
Maurice chuckles at one childhood memory – which could have come straight out of an Oor Wullie annual.
“I managed to get my head through railings at the corner in Ringford,” he laughs.
“But I couldn’t get back out because my ears got stuck.
“The fire brigade was called out from Castle Douglas and they prised apart the railings with a brace to free me – and there’s still a kink in those railings 74 years later.”
Maurice tells me he attended Loanhead Primary School in Kilmarnock, which had internal thin cellular box walls and not exactly soundproof.
“I remember one day Mr Brown, the teacher next door, was shouting and next thing this wooden blackboard pointer comes flying straight through the partition wall into our classroom.
“We had Miss Ledgerwood, who when I was wee seemed a monster of a woman.
“But when I was 16, I was invited back to make a presentation on her retirement – and here was this wee meek woman.”
Maurice’s next destination, he continues, was James Houston Secondary School, affectionately known as ‘The Jimmy’.
“Secondary school was fun – it was a wild place,” he says.
“On my first day there was a fight in the playground which would have put Mike Tyson to shame – fists up, shirts off.
“School interfered with my life – I preferred to be guddling in the burn.
“It did teach me a lot of values in life – stay away from fights, for example.
“And at The Jimmy a strong moral code was very high on the agenda, because Kilmarnock was a rough place.
“Every second Saturday it was football at Rugby Park to watch Kilmarnock, which had a great team then.
“We beat Hearts in the last game of the 1964-65 season to win the First Division title – Scotland’s top league then.
“That qualified us for Europe and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and we lost to Eintracht Frankfurt 3-0 away in the first round.
“Nobody gave us a chance but when we got them back to Rugby Park we beat them 5-1.
“McFadzean, who was my school teacher, scored the winning goal – they were still part-time players in those days.”
When the team was playing away, Maurice recollects that Saturdays usually involved a hair cut.
“My grampa Black would take me to Somerville’s barber’s shop in Kilmarnock,” he says.
“It had four leather chairs and a big mirror down one side and a long bench seat with plastic covering down the other.
“It was men only with iffy magazines and the barbers all wore white coats down to their ankles.
“There was Brylcreem everywhere with hair knee deep on the floor, and when you walked in all you could smell was Bay Rum aftershave.”
I can almost picture the scene and, through maternal intervention, it transpires that would be the profession in which Maurice would ply his trade.
“My mum told me she had got me a job as an apprentice hairdresser in Glasgow,” he smiles.
“And in those days you did what your mother told you.
“I would get the train to St Enoch’s, a bus to Anderston Cross then run like hell up to Sauchiehall Street to get to the hairdresser’s for 9am.
“I was doing my training with Daniel Pediani, a world champion hairdresser who won the title in Paris.
“He was a conversationalist first and foremost and always said that in business put your name above the door – if you don’t, what are you afraid of?
“I started there just as things started to ‘swing’ and Glasgow was buzzing.
“We tended to the Tiller Girls who danced at the King’s Theatre and a number of celebrities came and went.”
“The place shut from 1pm to 2pm and as a group we would wander up the road to the Locarno Ballroom for a Coca-Cola and a dance.
“It was great – there were plenty of women. We has 80 of a staff and in those days hair fashion was all beehives and French rolls.
“It was mainly ladies but we had special male customers too, including Celtic and Rangers players who did not want to be seen in public. We had a private room for them – we had a very select clientele.
“The boss was a Celtic supporter but he wore Rangers braces. He knew how to keep his clients onside.”
Working for a man at the top of his profession was tough, Maurice admits, but the experience was priceless in business terms.
“One of my first lessons as a young stylist was that the client is king,” he says.
“And if you got something wrong you got a rattle with a towel – that’s just how it was.
“From that day to this I made sure that the client comes first – but that staff are equally important.
“I remember one client who was part of Glasgow society.
“We’d have the chef from the Buttery Restaurant deliver her lunch of fillet steak and salad while she was under the hair dryer.
“On another occasion a very smart gentleman in bowler hat and spats was collecting his wife.
“I enquired his name and ‘Mr Kenneth McKellar’ came the reply.
“I had only ever seen the famous Scottish tenor in a kilt and boy, did I get the sharp edge of my boss’ tongue.
“I was there for a couple of years and passed my exams – and as soon as you did that you were thrown out.
“They had no purpose for you after that.”
Next step for Maurice, I learn, was setting up on his own in his home town – with hands-on backing from his bank.
“I came back to Kilmarnock and opened two Maurice Halliday shops, the first in Princes Street behind the Regal Cinema,” he tells me.
“I was only 19 or 20 but confident in my own abilities – and the British Linen Bank was as well.
“I still remember the manager standing there in front of a blazing fire in his office.
“He asked me how much money I wanted and said ‘well, that’s not enough’.
“I bought the shop and had to go back once a week for an interview with him.
“He would ask ‘how’s it going?’ and the whole thing wouldn’t last more than 10 minutes.
“It was good for me – I learned a lot from that wee interview every week.”
Maurice tells me he was single-handed to begin with, then went up to three staff and moved to London Road opposite Henderson Church, where he was an elder.
“The Kaypark Tavern was across the road,” he recalls.
“In 1968 I opened a second shop in Dean Street opposite Black’s Bar and the Coronation Bar.
“One day I was standing in the shop doorway and suddenly this man comes flying out through the Coronation’s front window.
“The barman came out into the street and was shouting at this guy ‘ye’re barred’.
“Kilmarnock then was full of factories and hard drinkers.”
At this point Maurice pulls something of a surprise – a few years after opening his second hairdressers in Kilmarnock he sold up and moved to Kirkcudbright – for a new venture in the hospitality trade.
“Early in 1975 I indulged my interest in food and drink and bought the Mayfield Hotel, in partnership with my father,” he explains.
“The plan was to turn the business around and sell after three years, then go back to Ayrshire – but I’m still here.
“The hotel, sadly long gone in a spectacular fire, had 25 bedrooms, a large restaurant and function room, but no bar.
“It had been a temperance, tee-total hotel but we put in two bars.
“Soon we built it up to be the busiest place in town with regular bus parties, functions and weddings.
“We got on well with the local folk and had no problems at all but there were some funny incidents.
“I had been up late doing the tidying up after a Saturday night dance when early the following morning the doorbell went.
“‘Bloody hell,’ I thought and went through – and here’s these four guys from Twynholm with a door.
“‘We’d like to apologise, Mr Halliday,’ they said, ‘we took the toilet door home with us last night’.
“They even had a joiner with them and he put the door back on.
“Who knows why they took the door away – but at least they brought it back.”
