At-ease girls, it's John Frieda

John Frieda has rewritten the hairdressing rule book in more ways than one. Not only has he made his haircare products more profitable than Coca-Cola (the Sunday Times's sums - he earned £153 million last year - confirm his is the most successful hair product company in the world), but he has managed something almost more remarkable - he has taken the naff out of hairdressing.

It helps that he's dropped the bouffant curls of earlier years and now has an immaculate steel-grey crop and an East Coast wardrobe of cashmere sweaters, crisp white shirts and Tod's shoes. And although he is still on good terms with his exwife, Lulu, he shies away from the celebrity scene.

It has doubtless made all the difference that he thinks of his downtown Manhattan penthouse as home, so he has never been tempted by the leather-trouser lifestyle or the endless London B-list parties. And it can have done no harm that he is both soft spoken, straight and, at 51, startlingly attractive.

Plus, of course, the fact that 13 years ago he traded the salon for the boardroom, the lab, and the front seat on the left in Concorde has put him in another league from his competitors. Among the top rankers - Charles Worthington, Nicky Clarke and Vidal Sassoon - Frieda stands out like David Beckham at a darts tournament.

The fabulous life of Frieda is unusual - as super-rich businessmen's go - in that it combines the fastidiousness peculiar to the world of fashion, the obsession with control typical of the successful entrepreneur, and a robust sporty outlook and abhorrence of all things flash that's more English public schoolboy.

His clothes in their bedroom chest were once described as looking as if they had been folded with the aid of a spirit level, and he is a man who could be driven insane by a tulip drooping too far to the left in a vase.

At the same time there is a touch of the Robert Redford about him: he is a serious skiier, hosting large parties at the Arlberg hotel in Lech, Austria,
a good water-skiier and a fanatical cricketer who rarely misses a Test match (he is a member of Sir Tim Rice's team). His other passions are those usually associated with the gentleman landowner rather than the multi-millionaire.

Top of the list is garden design followed by interior decoration, which he enjoys almost as much as buying property. Besides the seven salons worldwide, the New York penthouse and a lakeside cabin in Connecticut, he owns a villa in Ibiza and is said to be looking for a country house in England with its own cricket pitch. In London, home is Claridge's, in LA he stays at L'Hermitage, and in Paris it's Le Meurice.

His ideal dinner companions would be Andrew Roberts and Iain Duncan Smith (he donated cash to his campaign) rather than the Hollywood A-list, though this also reflects his craving for self-improvement.

A man in his position can have few regrets but his is that he left school at 16. By way of compensation he reads voraciously: The Story of Mathematics by Lloyd Motz and a collection of texts about the Orthodox Christian tradition are on his bedside table. Holidays do not feature large in John Frieda world but his taste inclines either to the ultra-luxurious (Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos) or the sporting break.

Privacy is high on his list of priorities and, besides his cricketing pals, it's hard to pin down his social circle. A house party might include his business partner, Gail Federici, and her twin daughters (featured in the current Sheer Blonde TV ads), his son with Lulu, Jordan, make-up artist Barbara Daly and her husband, Laurence Tarlow. His social life seems to be low key and his sex life is strictly under wraps.

It's an open secret that Isobel Goldsmith pursued him, and Lulu's motives for continuing to hover in the background seem to have little to do with Jordan (they divorced in 1991, blaming the pressure of their respective careers), but, though he doesn't discount the possibility of marrying for a second time, Frieda is keeping shtoom. His appeal is not to be underestimated - the beauty community is packed with women harbouring Frieda crushes.

Frieda was the son and grandson of suburban hairdressers and it was his father who arranged his apprenticeship with Leonard, the top Mayfair hairdresser of the day. John was privately educated, at King's School, Harrow, in the hope that he might become a doctor. Meanwhile, Frieda senior was a keen property dealer on the side and John soon caught the bug; by the age of 20 he owned three houses, living in one and renting out the other two, which enabled him to buy his first salon in New Cavendish Street, in 1979.

Times were never exactly hard, but something was driving the man who invented the Purdey haircut. The real moneyspinner was the launch of Frizz-Ease in 1989: one bottle is sold every 30 seconds.

He is still up at 7am and described as "extraordinarily self-disciplined". He seems to get his kicks from going global, and from making things nearperfect - whether it's a shirt crease, a hair serum or an annual conference (in recognition of blinding sales figures, Frieda once booked the Beach Boys). Now that's class.