Jacob Rees-Mogg might be asking his family nanny to get the pudding bowl out for an “emergency” lockdown haircut, he jokingly told MPs.
The Commons leader said he risks looking like a “long-haired lover from Liverpool” – a reference to Jimmy Osmond’s 1972 chart hit – if his locks get any longer.
Hairdressers aren’t due to reopen until July at the earliest, prompting fellow Tory MP Selaine Saxby to tell Parliament on Thursday: “As we’ve noticed being back in the chamber this week, many of us across the House are in desperate need of a trip to the hairdresser.”
Mr Rees-Mogg replied: “When I was a child I remember there being a song ‘I’ll be your long-haired lover from Liverpool’.
“I had never aimed in my whole career to end up looking like the long-haired lover from Liverpool but I fear I’m heading in that direction.
“I’ve never had longer hair and I’m beginning to wonder whether I ought to ask nanny if she can find a pudding bowl and put it on and see if something can be done as an emergency measure.”
After ministers heckled him with glee, Mr Rees-Mogg replied: “Of course nanny is part of the household, what a daft question.”
Mr Rees-Mogg said the Government is working with the industry to develop “safe ways” for salons to open their doors again at the “earliest point”.
He went on: “I think many of us will feel there is a burden lifted from our shoulders when the hairdressers reopen.”
Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans intervened: “Sadly, leader, not all of us have a nanny.”
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman earlier told a Downing Street press briefing: “It is correct to say that we are working as quickly as we can to get hairdressers up and running safely and that is one of the areas in which we have a ministerial-led task force focused upon.
“But as we set out in our road map it is our ambition to reopen them from July at the earliest and that would be subject to the scientific advice at the time.”
