It may also be the world's most expensive haircut - or the cheapest, depending on where you're coming from. First you have to get to Shenzhen in China, just over the border from Hong Kong.Then to the top floor of the market on the right as you come out of the railway station.Next to the restaurant (good ginger-flavoured coffee) is a large establishment with an old-fashioned barber's pole outside.

Go in and say OK to everything that is suggested ¹The rather stunning girls will take your belongings and offer you a drink - of hot water. You will be led to a hairdresser's station and the shampoo girl will squirt shampoo onto your dry hair. Then she will spray water at it and gradually work up a lather by giving you a scalp massage. This takes about ten minutes and for the first time since you were a baby you have the idea that your skull was originally more than one bone.

Then you are led to the backrinse where the chairs are so constructed that you lie flat on your back. Next a fetching little blue towel is wrapped round your head to blot your hair and you return to the original station, where you lean forward onto your forearms and are given a full (and that word is used advisedly) back massage. Now sit up straight and you get the shoulder to fingertip massage culminating in the joint cracking finger pulls. This massage takes about twenty minutes altogether.

Then you change stations and meet the stylist. At this stage it helps to have a picture with you unless you're feeling very brave. A very nice young man will cut your barnet for you ². Possibly another will blow dry. You will get another cup of hot water at this stage. Then you make a blind choice between hairsprays or don't say OK to this bit

Smile pleasantly and go and pay Hong Kong $35 (about US $5) for this "basic" haircut and take yourself to another establishment for a manicure and pedicure which will involve more massage and perhaps hot wax and probably more hot water.(Another US $10 all in)

AND no conversations about your holidays, no snooty remarks about "who cut this last time", no trying to talk you into expensive products and it's a wonderful cut that lasts for weeks. Just shake it after your shower and it will fall into place.