MEN are creatures of habit. Like clockwork, they head off to have unruly trusses trimmed by the hands of experts yielding comb, scissors and razors.
At the hairdressers or the barbers, in they trot. It’s where barber Danny Cochrane says blokes sit in the chair more for the social interaction than the cut.
“That goes both ways ... I spend more time talking about everything else than cutting hair,” he said between snips on Sunday.
Joining the conversation was Gerard Dehne. “I get a haircut when I need one ... if it’s getting too long, I know it’s time,” he said, musing that the last cut was about four months ago and he had gone more than a few weeks beyond his “regular” cut.
Danny, the son of Wedderburn hairdresser Cindy, has brought his tonsorial skills to town on monthly visits to see family.
He’s a bloke’s barber and thinks men are more themselves chatting away to a barber than a hairdresser.
Although Danny himself started as a hairdresser. As a 14-year-old, he began as an apprentice in a women’s salon after a chat about what to do as a career. 
“When I started we were told not to talk politics, pregnancies and religion,” Danny said. “So the talk with women sitting in the chair was all about fashion and what they were doing at the weekend.
“Actually, I started cutting hair to meet women,” he laughs.
 It’s not always about conversation, says Danny who has been exclusively cutting men’s hair for the last decade.
“Some just come in, sit down, relax and have a little sleep while I work away,” he said.
Danny estimates that after two decades, 98 per cent of his mates he has met through cutting hair.
“Barbers are part of a bloke’s life and some customers I have had for pretty much the whole time I have been cutting hair,” he said.
“It’s a pretty cool job because you become part of their lives. For many blokes, having the hair cut is a way of maintaining connection with people. I reckon blokes like their hair being cut by a bloke because they can be themselves talking away.”
Researchers say the first barbering services were performed by Egyptians in 5000 BC with instruments made from oyster shells or sharpened flint.
In the Middle Ages, barbers also performed surgery, pulled teeth and were the go-to men for leeching and bloodletting, fire cupping, enemas, the lancing of boils and cysts and even spinal manipulation. Danny’s not heading down those paths. He’s says there’s still the love of cutting hair after 21 years. Or as he bills the services, giving the long locks the chop.
“I love spending time with mates and cutting their way,” he said.
And the wellbeing aspect of what he does makes Danny pretty happy to spend time in chair chat with customers.
One glitzy barber’s shop puts it another way: “History’s pendulum has however recently swung with men again flocking back to the barber shop, a place where chaps can take a load off, let it all hang out, chew the fat and get a good old-fashioned shave and snip.”
Danny’s been doing that since he started with the scissors.