“With Dr Faustus, most of the rehearsal time is spent asking questions like `What’s hell like?’ Looking for a character’s interior life is ridiculous I just flung all my ideas at it. I’ve been lucky enough to have done a few of them – Hamlet, Tom Pinch – but you get that feeling of fulfilment directing any play.” Franks insists that he was pushed into directing by Matthew Francis, artistic director of the Greenwich Theatre. He made a highly successful debut there with Dr Faustus and then returned with The Browning Version, one of the best of the recent Rattigan revivals. How does he dovetail two careers? “Actors get to a certain stage where they want to take more responsibility,” he replies “There are very few parts which are entirely fulfilling. It looks wonderful, a little bit like Van Gogh’s flowers.” Well, maybe; but you wouldn’t want to hang it on a wall.

A basic cut at Kaiserschnitt costs 40 marks (about £17); colouring 70 marks No price quoted for a blow dry.. “I’m so diffident. I’m almost Japanese in my politeness.” These are virtues rare in actors, and even more so in directors Philip Franks is both. Last seen as Tom Pinch in the BBC’s Martin Chuzzlewit, Franks is now back directing Webster’s Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. “It helps if a man or a woman has lots of hair down there,” adds Dollie “It gives you more to work with We can cut flower shapes and colour them.

“Mary Quant once had hers trimmed in the shape of a heart.” Unfortunately, the geometric cut made famous by her friend Vidal Sassoon is impossible with pubic hair: it only works on straight locks. “If you have a distinctive hair style down below,” says Ms Proctor, “it will help you stand out during the many, many close-up scenes.” With the wide availability of hard-core videos on the Continent, it was only a matter of time before the general public started to pay closer attention to their own pubic hair. And, let’s be frank about this, the hair down there is often in need of a bit

of tidying up, to say the least “It’s not that unusual,” claimed Ms Proctor. “It helps establish who’s who in a porno film,” explained Lynne Proctor of Body Art magazine, a dandy publication which carries articles on tattooing, body piercing and pubic hairdressing. “Men and women of all ages and classes, and they ask for the strangest things. One of them had pearls attached to his pubic hairs, a little bit like a chandelier. It’s a question of aesthetics.” And, judging by the nature of the requests, somewhat questionable tastes The current trend was started in the pornography industry.

And what kind of person could possibly be under the delusion that pubic hair extensions are this year’s look? “We get all types of people in here,” claims Dollie, one of the female stylists. An unsuspecting person answering the “models required” ad in the window might be in for a bit of a surprise (allthough not as much of a shock, one might imagine, as the model’s unsuspecting partner). It’s full of great ideas for those whose knowledge of pubic hairdressing stretches from bikini-line waxingto bikini-line plucking. There are no wall mirrors, and no music, and slap-bang in the middle is what can only be described as a cross between a dentist’s chair and a gynaecologist’s bench. It’s basically flat, with one end raised, and the entire contraption is covered in sterile tissue. The decor might not be as plush, but there is a book of photographs showing the styles on offer which the client can flick through for inspiration. But at the rear of the salon, down a dimly lit stairwell, is a basement room painted entirely purple.

This is the pubic, as opposed to the public, cutting room, where only the brave shall enter. Trendy stylists stand behind a row of barber’s chairs tousling and teasing, and snipping and shaving the heads of their young clients, as the booming sounds of techno music reverberate around the room. One client had the audacity, and the sense of humour, to request dreadlocks For obvious reasons, no one has ever asked for a perm When you enter the salon, it looks just like any other. The Kaiserschnitt is the only pubic hairdresser in Europe, and possibly the only salon in the world where you can get a short back and curlies. As well as trimming, shaving (the Mohican is a favourite) and colouring pubic hair, Felix Vermeulen, the proprietor and chief crimper, will also weave pubic hair extensions on to the existing hairs. Roughly translated as the “Kaiser’s Snip”, the salon is at the cutting edge of, well, not to put too fine a point on it, pubic hair.