VETERAN crimper Vidal Sassoon is still loving life, despite battling cancer and losing his eldest daughter.

The thought of meeting legendary hairdresser Vidal Sassoon made me wish I’d had a good trim and my roots done beforehand.

But I shouldn’t have worried. The world famous stylist who revolutionised women’s hair with his short, sexy bobs, geometric styles and trademark “five point cut”, is charming and gracious throughout our interview, and I don’t feel his eyes wandering towards my neglected locks once.

The Sixties superstar hairdresser cut the hair of an endless stream of contemporary models and celebrities, including Mia Farrow, Mary Quant, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Nancy Kwan. Today he’s here to promote his memoir, Vidal: The Autobiography, a tome awash with amazing stories of the movers and shakers of the art and fashion worlds, as well as the tale of his own rise to fame.

“I loved that time. It was when the ‘meritocracy’ took over. It wasn’t the demise of the aristocracy, but you had to strive to get to the top. There were so many young people giving Britain the name it’d never had before – it had been so stodgy.”

Sassoon, 82, rarely picks up the scissors these days, and has only ever cut wife Ronnie’s hair once.

He has long since sold the salons and the brand rights to the hair products which bear his name, but still remains busy working on projects like his book, and a documentary about his life, due to be screened here in April.

This is despite his share of health scares, including a quadruple bypass 10 years ago and more recently treatment for pneumonia following the removal of two cancerous sores.

Born in Shepherd’s Bush, London, to Jewish parents, his Greek father left his mother for another woman, leaving her destitute, when Vidal was three and his brother Ivor was one. The boys stayed at their aunt’s initially but were then moved to a Jewish orphanage for nearly seven years, until their mother remarried and could once again provide for them.

Today, he shrugs off his childhood hardships.

“We didn’t know any different,” he says simply. “If you’re brought up in a certain ambience, you don’t know the difference. But in my teens I knew I wanted to get away from it.”

It was his mother who dragged him to respected East End crimper and disciplinarian Adolf Cohen, asking him to take the young Vidal on. An apprenticeship was normally 100 guineas, but Cohen thought Sassoon was particularly well mannered and took him on for nothing.

When Sassoon opened his own salons in later years, the discipline stayed with him. His male stylists had to look immaculate in three-piece suits, his female employees were always sharp and fashionable.

The hairdresser built up a global empire, opening salons worldwide, launching academies and hair products, but admits his workaholic nature helped contribute to the breakdown of his first three marriages.

“They were lovely ladies who all tired of living with a somewhat over-ambitious, neurotic individual.”

He has been married to fourth wife Ronnie for 18 years, and it is she who has helped him through some of the most difficult times of his life.

In 2001, at the age of 33, his oldest daughter, Catya, died from a drugs overdose, leaving three children.

“You get Catya days. They are less and less now because it’s many years ago,” he reflects.

The bad times come and go, but Sassoon is optimistic the good times will roll on. And slowing down is not on his agenda.

“I can’t see myself with my feet in the sand for more than a month. It’s not my style.”