The Shave Doctor is cutting it with stars

"I even remember the sound the water made when he waggled his shaving brush in the Belfast sink, it was a real performance," he says.

"Now guys tell me they can't spare just five minutes to have a shave – it drives me potty."

The 44-year-old who grew up in Doxeyfields, Stafford, is now a shave guru whose mission is to convert men to the old-school wet shave. At the very least he wants men to treat themselves to a professional shave every time they go for a haircut.

Ideally he wants to recreate barber shops as seen in the classic 1990s sitcom Desmond's – 'little communities where men can come and talk,' he says.

The former King Edward VI School pupil, who does some work at the Rachel Lamey hair salon in Rugeley, discovered a need for his skills after setting up his own company supplying shaving products in 2006.

Demonstrating the goods at shows up and down the country, he began getting calls from beauty salons and spas who wanted to learn how to give male customers a professional shave.

A light bulb went on. Since then the sharply dressed and eminently engaging Shave Doctor, as he is now known, has developed the business in a different direction.

In that time he reckons he has shaved more than 40,000 chins.

He has also brought out his own range of lemon and tea tree oil-based shaving products and in recent months has found his star rising even higher.

On Tuesday he appeared in the new MTV reality show Beauty School Cop Outs – which stars Daniel Jarrousse from?Coseley – and at the end of the month he has been asked to take part in a celebrity shave-in at Westminster Bridge in London marking the end of Movember, the annual moustache-growing charity event.

He has set up teams in Australia and Greece, launches in Belgium and the Netherlands in April and has plans to expand the business to South Africa.

He says: "It is all happening at the moment but it's not as glamorous a life as it sounds. It's hard work but I'm passionate about what I do and that keeps me going."

Around 80 per cent of his clients are women who want to offer the service in salons but who cannot afford the time to take a 12-month NVQ barbery course.

He passes on his knowledge in a packed two days at the Long Hair salon in Horsefair, Rugeley.

"In the old days there would be a head barber who would have someone to mix the creams, warm the towels and sharpen the razor, while someone else did the actual shaving. It could take years to learn because every face, every skin, is different. You come across razor rash, ingrown hair, acne, razor burn.

"Men say they've got sensitive skin so can't shave properly when really they're just not using the right products or the proper technique."

The father-of-two, who now lives in Little Haywood, says it has sometimes been an uphill struggle to get his message across.

"It's just not the sort of thing guys talk about. They're not going to go down the pub on a Friday night and say to their mates: 'Sorry I'm late, I've had a problem shaving.'

"It's getting better. I was a teenager in 1980s when the New Romantics scene made make-up for men acceptable, and in the 70s Marc Bolan was doing it, but male grooming is still very much a taboo subject."