IN the Fifties and Sixties, when a girl told you she was washing her hair rather than going to the dancing, it was not an excuse.

Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn and Cilla Black didn't get their sculptured styles without working for them, and nor did anyone else.

Friday nights were always set aside for washing, sculpting, drying, plating and curling says Barbara Pettitt, 70.

Girls followed the styles of their film and TV idols, she says, and the looks always changed with the fashion.

"Cilla Black had curly hair and we all had it. It would be back-combed and take hours, but when it was set in that style it stayed there," she said.

"In the rock'n'roll era, girls had pony tails with little curly bits at the front. When you swung round, they swung with you."

Without today's hi-tech hair products, girls went through a lot to set their hair.

Some even went to bed with a pair of knickers over their hair, Barbara says, to keep their bouffant in place. "Everybody had a beehive," she said. "It was a bit of fun. You used to take it right up and comb each layer then spray it then put it back and backcomb it and some girls used sugar and water to stiffen it. You had an awful job taking it out though."

There was a chocolate box cut, she says, which looked like a dog had nibbled it at the back, but fell forward at the front, over your ears, modelled by one of the women advertising Rowntrees' chocolate.

Other girls chose pin curls, to look like Sophia Loren.

Some rollers were the size of coke cans, and curling could be an uncomfortable job, admits Barbara, but they were better than the metal pin curlers of the Forties.

You would have to go to bed in your curlers and hairnet. "I think husbands just got used to it," said Barbara. "My hair used to go flat as anything but I'd do it back up again."

By the Seventies, long, straight hair was much more popular.

Some girls actually ironed their hair, Barbara says. Those who used tongs had to spit on them first, to test the heat.

"You could test them on paper first and if it turned brown you would know it wouldn't singe your hair," she said.

"Often, the first thing you would do when you got in from work was wash your hair, dry it and put the rollers in."

But women weren't the only ones in growing their hair in the Sixties.

Plenty of men carried their combs and hairspray around with them too.

The Press picture editor Martin Oates loved his locks so much he turned down a job at the bank when he was asked to cut them off.

Soon after, he was offered a job on The Yorkshire Evening Press, but the editor constantly pressed to have them sheared.

"At the time, I didn't feel it was untidy, it was just the fashion," said Martin. "It was shoulder length, very straight and dark brown.

"I think my parents just lived with it although I think my dad would have been happier if I'd had a more traditional hair style.

"At the end of the day it was a fashion thing."

In the late Seventies, Martin agreed to have a perm for a feature in the paper.

He felt slightly uncomfortable having his hair in rollers, he admits, but kept the perm for a year.

"It was a Kevin Keegan-style perm," he adds.

Meanwhile, York journalist Steve Nelson's school teachers often told him to cut his long hair in the Seventies.

Far from being deterred, he went on to highlight it blonde, but cut it with the emergence of punk.

"If anything changed hairstyles it was punk, but in the disco era everyone had long hair," said Steve. "Punk was a big change for black people as well because they deserted the afro look with the death of disco."