A French hairdresser almost ruined my wedding and I’ll never trust one again – even though I live there! SAMANTHA BRICK

I haven’t been through a breakup, I’m not having a midlife crisis and I don’t have a new job, so why, after over 30 years of being a blonde, did I decide to go brunette?

You may be surprised to hear that it was because my trusted French hairdresser retired. It had taken me years to find her after numerous traumatic visits to various French salons – with disastrous results.

So, when she sat me down to break the news, I burst into tears. Then promptly booked up appointments until her very last working day. Since then I have channelled my inner French girl going for a low maintenance cut (I do it myself) and colour. I now use a box brunette dye, as close to my original colour as possible, which I pick up in Spain every few months for the princely sum of €2.99.

Samantha loves France but says there is nothing wonderful about the nation’s hairdressers

Samantha (right) with an 80s-style corkscrew perm, although in this case a French coiffeur may not be to blame 

While there is so much that’s wonderful about life in France – and I feel un petit-peu guilty in saying this as the country has been my home for 16 years and I’m now a French citizen. But I’m afraid, full disclosure here, there is nothing wonderful about the nation’s hairdressers. If you’re going on holiday to France this summer, my advice is to enjoy ‘le pain’ and ‘le vin’ but please, whatever you do, do not step over the threshold of a hair salon.

For starters, most salons operate a chaotic appointment system, you will never ever sit in the chair at your appointed time. Allow me to share a few examples of my hair horreurs…

During my time in France, I have visited dozens of salons – and I have walked out in various frightful states. I’ve left with wispy silver threads through my hair, an orange tint and one time – after paying €100 – skulked out with the same root hair regrowth I’d trotted in with.

The day before my French wedding in 2008 should have been stress-free. Instead, I was sitting in a hairdresser’s chair looking in absolute horror at the rehearsal result of my bridal updo. Rather than the neat champagne blonde chignon we had discussed, I had a ratty brunette hair piece attached to the top of my head. The blonde highlights I’d asked for were orange. Worst of all, on my parting were uneven colour blotches left by the blonde peroxide that my stylist had enthusiastically applied while also chatting to her mate on the phone.

I wanted to weep. Instead, I knocked back the glass of fizz my sisters had thoughtfully provided for me, then told them to cancel their bridesmaid appointments to avoid further tears.

For the big day, I was too cowardly to tell my stylist exactly what was wrong with her efforts (besides, I was still getting to grips with the language) and went ahead.

You’d think the country that invented Brigitte Bardot would know how to do highlights well. Still, I travelled back to the UK for my highlights at first, every eight weeks. Six times a year doesn’t sound so bad – does it? I had a fantastic stylist in Solihull, who I didn’t have to talk to about the colour or the cut, he knew best, and I trusted him.

One fabulously chic (also blonde) girlfriend has regularly returned to her Knightsbridge salon. She, like me, has given it a good go in rural France. We’re both alpha females who are (now) fluent in French and yet, somehow, we still walk out of each salon looking like someone has plonked a comedy wig on our heads.

Even with the cost of living crisis, another girlfriend has refused to relinquish her appointments at her Essex-based salon, using air miles to get there. Other friends block-book their Ryanair seats as soon as they go on sale.

I only stopped returning to Solihull because of the lack of low-cost flights outside of summer.

A lot of my French salon visits have been the result of word-of-mouth recommendations. Each time it’d require a two-hour round drive – nothing is local in rural France.

One ‘blonde specialist’ ran her salon from home, which meant – after her moving the Lego off the kitchen table – I came in very close proximity with the kid’s spaghetti tea in the sink drainer while the dye was washed from my hair. Home-run salons are surprisingly expensive places too. I paid €150 (and a tip) for highlights that left me looking like a footballer from Liverpool FC’s Spice Boys era.

Samantha used to fly back to the UK to visit her salon in Solihull rather than brave a visit to a French hairdresser

You’d think the country that invented Brigitte Bardot would know how to do highlights well, writes Samantha Brick

Another salon in a local village was run by a woman who was reassuringly blonde. I gasped when I saw her and booked an appointment on the spot. But while her thick hair looked fabulous, mine did not. My ends started to break thanks to the amount of bleach she used. This, combined with waiting hours for my 10am appointment, meant I stopped seeing her due to the stress involved.

Five years into life in France, I’d stop blondes on the street and inspect their highlights before asking for the details of their hairdresser – to little avail. One, a lawyer, told me she travelled to Switzerland to have hers done, while another woman explained her sister did hers.

I can only speculate, but I suspect these hairdressers are used to colouring blonde on thick dark French hair, not finer, often mousy British hair like mine. Take France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron, and her glorious full-bodied blonde bob. No doubt, that her head of hair can take the onerous amounts of bleach applied to it over the years.

Clearly, there is good reason sophisticated Frenchwomen such as actress Marion Cotillard and fashion guru Carine Roitfeld have low-maintenance, shoulder-length brunette hair. There’s no complicated colouring or cutting involved. Because yes, the cutting here is often woeful too.

Eventually, I found my gem of a hairdresser, Nicole, by sheer chance in a neighbouring village. But since she laid down her bleach for la retraite, the only time a French stylist will ever touch my hair again is when I’m about to be buried six feet under.