Hairdresser takes on 24-HOUR haircut challenge for charity

A Leeming hairdresser is proving age is just a number by choosing to complete a 24-hour hair-a-thon to ring in his 60th birthday.

Having rubbed shoulders with Hollywood’s elite and achieved a number of accolades throughout his career, Lloyd Yeoh plans to undertake his second marathon hair-cutting challenge on March 4.

“It started when I first began hairdressing 40 years ago, a lot of my clients that would come in at the end of the day would always be worried that I would give them a bad haircut and it was really playing on my mind that as a hairdresser, the first cut and the last cut should be the exact same quality,” Mr Yeoh said.

“That’s where the idea was born and in July 1998, I did my first 24-hour hair-a-thon event in Penang, which was endorsed by the Malaysian Book of Records.”

Now 25 years on and in his humble home salon in Leeming, Mr Yeoh has two goals for the challenge: to cut hair for 48 people and to raise $50,000 for the Keune Foundation, which supports families when a child is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.

“I will turn 60 on March 5 and I wanted to celebrate this milestone birthday by donating my time and effort to help others who are less fortunate and so far we have raised $30,000,” he said.

“There will be 48 participants each allocated a 30-minute time slot and they can either get their usual trim or a complete change.”

Mr Yeoh said his big break in hairdressing came while working on the set of a Hollywood film alongside Frances McDormand and Patricia Arquette.

“I worked as an assistant hairdresser on the Hollywood movie set for Beyond Rangoon, which was filmed on location in Malaysia in 1994,” he said.

“For me, as a hairdresser, we tend to like to actually make people look beautiful but in Hollywood, you have to go according to the script.

“There was a scene where Patricia was in the mud, she was completely muddy from top to toe and we got to have fun putting mud all over her hair.

“By the end of the day, we couldn’t go back to the trailer so they used bottles of Evian water to clean her hair. It was a real Hollywood experience.”

Mr Yeoh also nabbed a second Malaysian record after he cut a model’s hair while she was hung upside down.

“In 2000, just before I came to Perth I did my gravity cut, where I performed a haircut on a model who was suspended upside down,” he said. “We did the event at a popular shopping mall in Penang and the haircut was completed in two minutes and 45 seconds; it was such a thrill.”

Mr Yeoh’s hair-a-thon will run from 6pm on March 4 to 6pm March 5 at Lloyd’s Hairdressing in Leeming.

To donate, visit his GoFundMe page.