Celebrity Exclusive - Barbara Windsor

The truth about my hair…

Barbara Windsor’s blonde barnet is as much a part of her bombshell image as her boobs, her laugh and her ‘’ello darling’ greeting. Yet the 67-year-old icon has, for years, hidden her hair under wigs, both on screen and off.

Now, as she returns to the public life after almost two years spent resting at home suffering from the energy-sapping Epstin-Barr virus, the star of EastEnders and the Carry On films breaks her silence about her hair problems.

Talking exclusively to woman’s own, Barbara – who live with husband, Scott Mitchell, 40, in London – reveals the truth about her bad hair days, how they’ve affected her life and why she no longer needs to wear a wig…

Have you always had problem hair?

Yes, it’s not that I don’t have a full head of hair – I do – but it’s particularly fine, baby hair, which has always been a problem. My mother would have liked a tall, sophisticated, dark-haired boy, but she ended up with me – short, fat and loud. She had amazing thick auburn locks, but I got my father’s hair. My mother made me feel terribly guilty – she’d say, ‘Your hair is bloody awful. You had to take after your father.’ My parents had a very bitter divorce, so I was a constant reminder of him.

You can’t do a thing with it?

It’s a nightmare. I have the same hair as Hi-de-hi! Star Su Pollard. The great thing for Su, though, is that hers has a kink in it, when you have totally straight, fine hair, it’s useless. My mother was always spitting on it and twisting it to try to give it a bit if volume. She’d send me for perms, too. She thought I’d look like Shirley Temple, but I never did. In any picture of me as a child, I have great big bows stuck on what I call my ‘nine hairs and a nit’. It looked monstrous. When I first spend the night with someone, I have to rush into the bathroom first thing to do my hair. Oh, to wake up with hair like Claudia Schiffer’s, with it draped all over the pillow! It really does get to you. I’ve always had a bubbly image, but nobody realised just how stressed I’d been about my hair all my life.

So you decided to wear a wig to disguise it?

I wore hairpieces first. Before the Carry on films, I made Sparrows Can’t Sing in 1963. I had a great hairdresser, but it used to take forever to do my hair – every strand had to be put in place. I remember the first day on location, it was damp weather, and within two minutes my hair had dropped. The director went mad and said, ‘Get her a hairpiece.’ It was wonderful – if you look at the film, you wouldn’t know. I wore hairpieces from then on.

It wasn’t difficult?

You feel a bit insecure. When you travel, you always have a spare one with you in a little box – but it’s embarrassing if anyone asks what it is. My great mate Amanda Barrie has fine hair like mine and she’s paranoid about it too. I know she won’t mind me saying that, it was nice tow work with Mand because we shared that. We used to send each other up about it all the time. She and I started out working in nightclubs together.

When did you first start wearing wigs?

I’d worn period wigs, but the first modern one I tried was when I played biker in Carry On Girls in 1973 – her hair had to cascade down her back when she took off her helmet. Wearing a wig was great – it was like a revolution for me, and I had several made. Nobody knew I wore wigs – that was the amazing thing – until it became fashionable to wear them whether you had hair or not. Then the paparazzi caught me coming out of a wig shop.

So did that make you want to ditch the wigs?

Well, it wasn’t just that. After we’d been together six years, Scott and I parted – he didn’t know how he was or what he was doing any more, my persona was taking him over. We got back together, of course, but when he left, I was so devastated that I lost about a stone in weight. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, ‘What was it that made him go?’ I decided it was my hair. I saw an advert for hair extensions and went along – I wanted to make my hair thicker, so I didn’t have to bother with wigs. Two weeks after I had them done, my scalp started to burn – it felt as if someone was pointing a blowtorch at my head. It got really sore. I couldn’t get hold of the hairdresser and I was too embarrassed to go to the doctor. I was in tears nearly every night – I thought I’d have to cut it all off.

So what did you do?

Luckily, I saw an article about the work Lucinda Ellery does for people with hair loss, and wondered if she could help. I’ve seen women walk into her salon almost suicidal and leave it on cloud nine. She saved my hair. It took three people four hours to pick out the extensions! They then applied treatments to get my hair and scalp back to normal. After that, Lucinda gave me new extensions. That was seven years ago.

Your hair looks fantastic…

It’s absolutely great and has made me feel really liberated. Wigs look lovely, but there’s always the anxiety about making sure they’re on properly. Steve McFadden, who, plays my son, Phil, in EastEnders, was in Majorca in Spain at the same time as us and invited us in to his boat. Once I would’ve wrapped a scarf round my head, but we were sailing along and I suddenly said, ‘Scott, look at my hair!’ It was blowing in the wind, just like in the movies. I got a bit tearful. I feel fantastic, I really do. And my husband can run his hands through my hair now.

Do you feel sexier?

Yeah, but I’ve never really felt sexy. I’ve got this sexy image that goes with the films, but that’s just a giggle.

You certainly look amazing in you keep-fit video…

Oh, thank you, darling. I’m really pleased with it. I couldn’t have done it before – you can’t do exercises with a wig stuck on your head… although I’m sure people do. I agree to make it as long as I could do the routines at home without expensive equipment – I use water bottles instead of weights and even do some exercises in bed, I didn’t want to pound the streets or go to a gym. I’m no good at those machines, and I’ll invariably stand next to a glorious lady with legs up to her armpits. People know me, too, so they’d say, ‘When’s Grant coming back to EastEnders?’ I’d never get anything done. Also, after having been in bed for over nine months when I was ill with Epstein-Barr virus, everything was stiff. I felt it was a good way to get back into working order.

Have you seen many benefits?

I’m asthmatic, and it’s made my breathing easier. It will probably sounds as if I’ve got one foot in the grave, but I’ve also got high blood pressure, and the exercises really get the blood flowing. I’ve not lost any weight, but I’ve toned up. I didn’t want to look like Keira Knightly – I’ll never be sylph-like. I’ve reached an age where I’m just happy to look well. Epstein-Barr is very debilitating – all my sparkle had gone. But now people say, ‘Ooh you look good. What pill have you taken?’ And that’s lovely.

A word from our hair doctor…

An expert in hair extensions, Lucinda Ellery has many more celebrity clients, including the Sugababes and Jordon, but she also helps women with alopecia (patchy hair loss), baldness as a result of chemotherapy, and trichotillomania (a compulsive disorder that causes sufferers to pull out their hair?.

Lucinda developed her ‘volumiser’ system – in which gauze is secured by existing hair to cover thinning areas before extensions are attached – after masking her own hair loss for years. At the age of nine she lost two thirds of her hair virtually overnight due to alopecia.

‘Barbara hasn’t suffered hair loss,’ says Lucinda, who has done the actress’s extensions for seven years. ‘She has a full head of hair and not a grey one in sight. She was just born with super-fine hair, which is hard to do anything with.
A wig was a fabulous option, but now she has the flexibility to change her hairstyle on a whim. She enjoys the freedom and the security. With extensions, you don’t have to worry about your wig being dislodged by silly things, such as umbrellas, hugs or low branches. A woman would never want to be parted from a decent head of hair,’ ads Lucinda. ‘It’s deeply connected to our psyche. For those of us who lose it, it’s de-feminising. You do suffer low self-esteem.’

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