Three Salons At The Seaside 

that's amazing!! I hope it still has the same retro signage outside

I tried searching vanity box and upto date photo and couldn't find one

@@missw324 your at the wrong shop lov trust me she's my sister and still there and doing hair what's wrong with being 80 we come from hardworking parents

Dont know any Charlotte 🤔

Just googled it and google maps shows the shop still with nets and the owner in front garden . The next door that was a video shop is now overgrown with leylandi

I've just watched the documentary which led me to this.

@@matthewwilkes1973same here!

me too

The very same reason I decided to watch it.

It was just as much as inspiration for the Mrs Merton character

Do you know Sheriff Grady Judd?

@@bouffant-girl I dont know him personally but he's the sherriff of Polk county. Why?

She sounds amazing 👏xxxxxx ♥️ 😍

It's been like that since the dawn of time. Go back several decades before this and the idea that working class pensioners would be able to spend time in hairdresses would have been an unimaginable luxury. We all seem to struggle with the fact that all of us, in every era that ever existed, are all on a giant conveyor belt. Nothing ever stays the same, ever. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus knew this when he said "You cannot step into the same river twice". Everything is constantly changing and evolving.

@@th8257 I agree wholly, but I really do think the last 20-odd years have seen the statues-quo challenged at a pace much faster than before. So much change and demand for acceptance has been pushed onto us, and that's not me saying I don't agree with how things evolve, this is me saying that us as human beings are proving we can't all of us adapt at the same pace as the change. One minute I was in my late teens and learning about how to behave as an adult in society, then the next I was in my 40s feeling equally as perplexed as all the rules had changed. It's the apparent lack of social boundaries that I struggle with most now, almost as if there's nothing there anymore against which anything can be bench-marked...it wasn't all that long ago that the overpowering aroma of the new neighbour's cannabis that invaded my home, left me wondering if my inability to sit in my living room and enjoy watching TV while they sat next-door & smoked it was in fact less important than their right to do as they pleased in their home...I'm still not sure as to the answer, all I know is I found the stench to be unbearable to the point of having to go out when they smoked it.

Most of the ladies gossiping in the salon are of the World War 2 generation, which has almost completely died off now, its final flickering flame arguably being extinguished with Queen Elizabeth's death 2 years ago. That generation, with their amazing life experience, had their own very distinct way of looking at things and we are the poorer for their passing. Like many others on here I can hear the voices of many sadly departed relatives in these ladies.

That is just perfect as you say , imagine 2 clients going the same funeral needing it 👍🤣, It would be Handbag wars !

I recently visited Blackpool and had a look for these salons. The Vanity Box is still there with an update to the exterior, neat as a pin - I half expected to see Hilary at the door. It does not seem to be trading now, hardly a surprise as Hilary would be 80 now. Mary's Way is still in business, outside updated a bit but much the same :)

@@Vacbear58still trading !!

I did exactly the same as you - looked for it straight after watching the Caroline Ahern documentary because Hillary from the Vanity box is my mum’s hairdresser! I couldn’t believe my eyes 😂

@MartinvonBargen . I used to go to a unisex shop for my haircuts instead of a barbershop.. most of the ladies there were getting their weekly shampoo and set .. plenty of chins waggin there some pretty juicy stuff too .. I was 31 or 32 at the time getting shampooed right along side of them -but no set 😝and the ladies in there were all about 85 including the ladies that would shampoo and cut my hair - they did better job than the barbers I went to. They were all nice with me .. I think they liked a young guy among them .. the only rooster in the henhouse .

I absolutely adore women; especially the lady who like md to drink Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey 😍 ❤️ 💕 💗 💖 💓

same and same, lol

The funeral bag was just the sweetest thing...the diary of death was, however, a whole new level! One has to wonder how such a document would have stood up to the rules of the modern-day GDPR. I know it's a cliche, but there is so much mileage in it, when I say that times were in so many ways much simpler back then...if it wasn't for Hilary's dislike of smoking (a fact that we learnt about from the documentary) you can be sure that several of her old girls would have been puffing away while under the dryer, such was the culture of day. I find it so, so hard to understand that 1994 was, in fact, thirty years ago. It seems like only yesterday.

Apparently it was one of the late great Caroline Aherne's favourites, I'm sure Mrs Merton would have felt at home in one of these salons.

@@jodypritchard5425 Maybe she would. May be not. Let's have a heated debate!

so true

Even better when you’re getting it done. I used to like the one lady that shampooed me when I went for a haircut.. old school ladies .. I think they did better job on my hair than the barber

thats it the community spirit and of course the gossip I remember going to a salon like this with my mum and I would always see the same ladies there .

Me too ✋️ I am dealing with severe urinary retention problems, that are becoming life-threatening, and I have to have badly malformed male genitalia completely removed, including total orchiectomy, and vaginoplastt performed very soon; and they have to dramatically shorten my urethra! Sadly, I have zero bladder tone ?! When I get stressed, it is amazing 👏 🙌 just how much a shampoo and roller wet set bouffant hairdo makes me feel a million times better! I can relax and just be lovingly pampered. It does absoluemtw wonders for my emotional health 😢 ✨️

Sometimes; you just need to be in a safe place; 🙏 ❤️ 😊 ✨️ where you can feel loved 😍 ❤️ ♥️ 💜 💕 💖 and cared for! This is why I am going to study Cosmetology as soon as I am physically able to do so!

She's 82 this yr and still going strong some of her original clients still go for there hair done she will never giv it up xxxx

My god how times chsnge .

Yes I very much agree. Definite royle family vibes. One of my fave tv shows too. It would’ve been funny if they did a salon episode. With all the ladies gossiping under the dryers 😂. God bless and hope you have a great day. Glad to relate and reminisce with a fellow Brit x ❤

Royle Family - Best Series ever!

I watched a doc about Caroline Ahearne and Craig Cash mentioned that this programme was a huge inspiration to them

I wish they did still make shows like this about every day life and it's characters

I grew up not knowing a lot of our neighbour's Christian names.Even where I lived for 25 years I still referred to some by Mr or Mrs.

It called beauty parlour stroke,

I can imagine that too

Do you still visit the salon Ellen ?

This documentary was a favourite of the late comedienne Caroline Aherne who wrote The Royale Family and was Mrs Merton.

@@DomBarber o yes i do. Still happy with my wash and set.

I LOVE ❤️ your big beautiful bouffant hairdo, and will have the same hairdo in a few months ❤️ 💙

I love ❤️ your hair ! I am going to have to have a mtf bottom surgery performed soon at UC DAVIS! I hope that I can find a salon/ school like this for when I just need to decompress; and be pampered for an hour or so!

It's the episode with Cate Blanchett

Filmed in the actual same salon apparently

I think it comes from the Irish my family came from Ireland to Liverpool in the mid 1800s and stayed in Lancashire subsequent generations I remember as a child going to see dead people it was normal for us a part of life

@@michelles2299 you're right. My father's family originated in ireland too. I remember when his mum died in 1985, she was laid out in my aunts home before the funeral. Nobody here ever speaks about death but i make up for it.

That parody is episode 3, season 4, of Documentary Now! and it's very good.

I was thinking that. She probably died at 13 of exhaustion!

I was a hairdresser for 45 years and loved every bit of it. The ladies would sit under the dryers and we would all talk and laugh!! These sweet women would confide to me the drama in their lives!! Made me happy that they felt better after I was done. They'd say " See ya next week"

She had the most GLORIOUS head of hair!

Her Crown was most Beautiful 🧡

If it isn't broken, don't try to fix it!

While not quite the same thing as this, two documentaries I thoroughly enjoyed (not least because of the interviews with ordinary people who talked about their everyday experiences) were as follows: The Secret Life of the National Grid 2 - Switching On (2010) All Mod Cons - NEW upload! - Complete Both are on youtube and can be found if you copy & paste the titles to the search box.

Do you still visit the salon ?

I wish the BBC would still make these one-off documentaries about real people

Ivy in Coronation Street, a character who’d been in it for years played by Lynne Perrie. She had plastic surgery without letting the programme makers know. It really changed her appearance and she was written out of the show soon after.

​@@robertm4102 I remember that then she went onto The Word and made a show of herself, that kiss, if you know you just know, wish I didn't 😂

You are right about the video shop next door, you would think the shop part had never been there, now replaced with a rather nice rose garden

It hasn’t. Still a shop. Still owned and run by Hilary.

There's not many "West End " stylists who can't Dress Hair that good , "Cottage Loaf" if not mistaken it was called

@markmulac954 I went to a shop that went unisex because that era of women were dying off .. although there were some still going once a week for the roller sets and pin curls . The place still looked like a grandma's beauty shop I always seemed to be the only guy in there ..well, I never got a roller set pin curled or permed .. but the old school beautician that cut my hair did better than the barber .. and one of the old ladies always shampooed me first .

They were all oh-so playing up to the camera at times, never more so the part where Hilary talks about her mother coming to the salon each morning "generally chewing an apple", and cue the grin & nod to camera...and from my end the sound of tumbleweed passing by...the fact that she thought it was funny is what make me giggle, not it being funny in isolation, because it wasn't. Nevertheless, the story about the woman getting knocked over outside Kwik Save never ceases to reduce me to fits - "I'VE BEEN IN THE GAZETTE BEFORE!". As for Mrs Merton, I don't doubt she was drawn from Hilary's "type", but whether Blackpool or Birmingham, women like her existed all over. As a child of the 70s who grew up in the 80s & 90s, I adored them.

I read somewhere that Caroline Ahearn loved this documentary and that Mrs. Merton was based on the owner of Vanity Box. I had the same weird deja vu while watching this!

@@bonapolone yes the similarities in looks, voice and mannerism are so clear!

Laughing so much, I am crying!! Thankyou.

Exactly what I said to my sister but it's because Victoria Wood had observed places like this that her writing is so brilliant.

it's VERY Victoria Wood. I love the hairdresser who sounds like Mrs Merton

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