I chopped off his blond locks and David became Ziggy

Suzi Ronson met Bowie after giving his mother a perm and would not only create his bold new look, but enjoy a one-night stand with the star.

- Nick Dalton

IT WAS the haircut that changed her life as much as his - and it was almost a disaster. When Suzi Ronson styled David Bowie's hair into a spiky bright red barnet, it was a key part of the alien persona that set the suburban singer on the path to superstardom, and helped change the course of pop music on the way. But as her engaging new memoir reveals, Ziggy Stardust's trademark hairdo nearly crashed and burned before it could send his career stratospheric.

"It takes me about half an hour to chop off his long blond hair and as it falls around my feet, I am cautiously optimistic," she writes in Me and Mr Jones,

"The feeling's short-lived though, as when I finish, his hair won't stand up it just flops to one side.

"I'm panicking and David doesn't look too bright, so I say with a confidence I don't feel, 'Don't worry, Dave, as soon as we tint it, the texture will change and it will stand up'."

She adds, almost unnecessarily: "I'm praying I'm right."

Ronson, then Suzi Fussey, had been introduced to David and wife Angie after giving the singer's mum, Margaret, a perm in 1971.

She met them shortly before Christmas at the bohemian flat the couple shared on the ground floor of Haddon Hall, a huge Victorian mansion in Beckenham.

The day after chopping off Bowie's golden locks, leaving him looking like a "schoolboy", Ronson was back in the high street salon in which she worked, experimenting with colours, landing on the Fantasy range by Schwarzkopf: Red Hot Red.

"Angie calls me at the salon a few days later and says in a bright but slightly strained voice that David isn't happy; she asks when I'll be back. "Tonight', I say, and with hair dye and confidence I go back to Haddon Hall."