Showered in sparkles from a pair of giant Roman candles, Andrew Barton strutted on to the stage and whooped. “This is the greatest industry in the world,” he yelled and then sank to his knees clutching his trophy.

Just audible over the colossal din of amplified drum rolls, a raddled Jonathan Ross, the master of ceremonies, did his best to spoil the moment with his own brand of obscene innuendo.

Ross’s cod misogyny might trouble a typical guest in the Grosvenor House Great Room on Park Lane, but this was no strangled, black-tie chicken dinner. Two thousand strong, the audience had travelled from scissor parlours across the country to celebrate and sulk over the selection of Britain’s finest crimpers and clippers. Stuffed and uplifted into narrow frocks and even tighter trousers, they pranced on to the stage, one woman propelling herself so fast that she needed to give her dress a quick tug to ensure it arrived at the same time.

Sporting a coiffure from hell, a ragrug insufficiently large to conceal his sagging eyelids, the talk show host dismissed his audience as Julies before inviting them to collect coveted awards — North Western Hairdresser of the Year (Angie James of Toni & Guy Liverpool), Afro Hairdresser of the Year (won by a white woman, Claire Rothstein from Bloww — no political correctness here), Avant-garde Hairdresser of the Year (Johanna Cree Brown from Trevor Sorbie) and the top prize of British Hairdresser of the Year, which went to Andrew Barton of Saks Hair & Beauty.

Hairdressing wasn’t always great, world-beating or even reckoned an industry worthy of the name. Close to tears, the North West’s champion, Angie James, probably spoke for many in the Great Room when she revealed that she had received little early encouragement for her ambition. “My careers officer told me hairdressing was a crap job,” she announced.

A crap job that is attracting very big money. Hairdressing is fast leaving behind the sweaty high street salon run by a dominatrix at the till, Mr Teasy-Weasy wielding his comb and a Saturday girl up to her elbows in shampoo.

It has all the trappings of a global enterprise, the frisson of celebrity and, most important, the financial support of some very large corporations. Buried in our national accounts, there is an item recording annual expenditure on hairdressing and personal grooming establishments. It has been rising steadily in real terms since 1995 and last year the money pumped into Britain’s salons and parlours flirted on the edge of £5 billion.

Hairdressing is about discretionary expenditure: how much can women spare each month for a bit of pampering at a salon. You can track the rise and fall of Britain’s fortunes using an inflation-adjusted record of annual hair and beauty spending in salons. It peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was depressed in the oil crisis years of the late 1970s and early 1980s, began to recover in the 1990s, and since 2000 hairdressing has been riding the crest of a wave.

It’s a very British wave. There is universal recognition that Britain sets the look that every woman wants, and it starts in London. Schwarzkopf, the haircare brand owned by Henkel, the German multinational, sponsors the British Hairdressing Awards, and Peter Belcher, who runs the professional products business, reckons that, where hairstyling is concerned, Britain has got it. “France and the US are important, but they tend to follow rather than lead. British hairstyling has an edginess.”

It all started in the late 1960s with Mary Quant and the assymetric cut, styled by Vidal Sassoon, says Martin Smith, marketing director of L’Oréal Professional Products. The French multinational flaunts its Gallic image as it bestrides the world but where hair is concerned its market researchers have their telescopes fixed on London.

“The British hairdressing market is the centre of the world,” Mr Smith reckons. “If you ask who styled the celebrity’s hair, who designed the new look, who does hair for the catwalk models, it is always a British hairdresser.”

If Vidal Sassoon highlighted Britain’s place on the global hair map, what has kept its crown for four decades? Toni Mascolo, who with his brothers, founded the Toni & Guy salon chain, has a whimsical answer: it all has something to do with British weather.

In sunshiny California, he says, hair is long and blonde and not much else. On a dreary, dark London day in January, British women are looking for something more adventurous. They are also prepared to spend more to get something special.