Well-known barber offers advice on lockdown haircuts!

As locks grow longer in lockdown, one popular Galway barber has advice for men getting scruffier by the day and contemplating DIY cuts: simple is best!

And Tom Nally of Tom Nally Barbers on High Street in the city says if you make a hames of your home haircut, don’t worry – it’ll grow back.

Mr Nally, who has cut the hairs of top politicians and paupers and everyone in between for over 46 years, has been bombarded with phone calls from men seeking haircuts.

But he closed his shop on the Saturday before St Patrick’s Day due to the Covid-19 restrictions and has had to turn down all requests. “I’m catching up on 25 years’ holidays,” he jokes.

“I’m inundated with calls every day for haircuts. It’s nice in a way but you just have to refuse, you can’t do anything. Even guys I’ve never met have been ringing me up. One guy below in Athenry rang me and said ‘I’ll travel to your house and give you whatever money you want!’,” says Tom Nally.

The Gaelic football referee and long-serving St Michael’s GAA Club stalwart, says with all the home-haircuts going on: “Hopefully there will be enough there when we go back!”.

His advice to lads attempting to cut their own hair at home using an electric razor kit with blades, is to keep it simple.

“The simplest way is to get one all over. But it’s very short,” he laughs.

“If they want to play safe, all they have to do is a four or five all over. If they have the attachments, then maybe do a six on the top and a four or a three on the back and sides. The big problem really is when people try to start getting the blending right, it’s literally impossible because it really does take years of practice,” he says.

He recommends the Wahl brand of clippers which is the most famous, and the top of the range, but any kind of a brand will carry you over for a month of two.

“It’d want to be very bad if you didn’t get two haircuts out of it,” he says.

As for mistakes, Tom Nally says don’t worry.

“Use a long attachment on the top, and a shorter one on the back and sides, depending on what kind of hairstyle you want. Just get the same amount of hair off all the way around.

“Stick to the basics, don’t try anything complicated, and at the end of the day, all haircutting mistakes will grow out. In most cases, the mistake will grow out and it’ll grow back,” he adds.

Have you given yourself the haircut from hell? Did your DIY clip leave you looking like you’d been scalped? We’d love to see photographs of your home haircut. You can email them to news@ctribune.ie – and we’ll show that you can take a joke by publishing them!