A HAIRDRESSER who took on her own salon while still a teenager has celebrated 45 years as the queen of the coiffures.

Deirdre Ogg began working at Clip 'N' Curl, in Chorley Old Road, in 1972, as a 17-year-old.

She bought the boutique just two years later, aged only 19, thanks to a £2,000 grant from her bank.

The grandmother-of-five now runs the hairdressers in partnership with sister Hayley Houilbecq, aged 55, who first started helping her sibling out as an 11-year-old.

To mark the milestone anniversary the two stylists celebrated at salon with their loyal and much-loved customers with a special cake and glasses of bubbly.

The shop was also decked out with balloons and thank-you cards from their longstanding and faithful clients, many of whom introduced their daughters and granddaughters to Clips and Curls over the years.

And it’s a love of her customers and a love of the job that has kept Mrs Ogg, aged 63, in the business of bouffants, beehives and blow-drys for more than four decades.

She said: “I just love my job. The customers that come in are still here 45 years later, it’s just like a home-from-home. I feel like I’m at home, I don’t feel like I’m at work when I’m here, I love it.”

Mrs Ogg added there was nothing more rewarding than seeing a customer leaving the shop with a stylish new hair-do.

“You feel proud, don’t you?” she said.

And Mrs Ogg, who lives in Smithills, said she and her sister had a special and close relationship with their clients — even helping them with health problems.

“One of our customers has been coming here for years had a brain tumour and we were the first to tell her something was wrong. Her head had changed shape and we picked it up from cutting her hair.”

Memories that stick in the talented tonsorialist’s mind from her 45 years at Clip 'N' Curl include night workers at Nortex Mill coming straight off shift to have their hair done, and being the only shop in Chorley Old Road open during the ‘Bolton Holidays’ of the 1970s.

But there have been difficult times too, the salon was once damaged in a fire after an arsonist struck at the premises.

Mrs Ogg’s hairdressing career began with a Saturday at La Boutique, in Bridge Street, while she was learning her trade at Bolton College, where she was named ‘student of the year’.

And from there she went on to work for her tutor Joy Vickers in Deane Road, then Valetta’s in Halliwell, before moving on to Clip 'N' Curl.