IT was just a passing comment but it certainly wasn’t an average start to a conversation.

“I’m just waiting for a call to find out if I am styling Rihanna at the weekend. I won’t be a minute.”

Welcome to the world of sought-after Hampshire hair stylist Guillaume Vappereau, a regular at London, New York and Paris fashion weeks, who has rubbed shoulders with the world’s top celebrities in dozens of countries across the globe.

And the list of celebrities is impressive, to say the least.

Armed with his scissors hanging from his trendy, leather- studded hairdressing belt, his hours of expertise lie behind the glossy images found in the world’s top magazines, from Tatler to Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

He shared a conversation with Cindy Crawford about why she swears by drinking bottled water on the set of a famous fashion shoot which dominated headlines.

Also in the room were four other of the world’s greatest supermodels: Helena Christensen, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigova and Yasmin Le Bon, as they were transformed into members of Duran Duran.

He was responsible for Victoria Pendleton’s tousled locks seen tumbling over her nude body in a seductive front page cover shoot for Esquire.

Then there are the male celebs. Just last week he was on hand to transform Andy Murray into a model; Ben Ainslie was just months before.

Not forgetting shoots with pop star Jamelia, Pixie Geldof and Shirley Bassey.

And then there was the time he jetted out to a township in South Africa and got caught up in a sand storm on location while styling a model handling a live cheetah.

“It’s not as glamorous as you might think on set. It is up at the crack of dawn to catch the light. Sometimes it means getting up in the early hours to get the models ready for a shoot at say 6am. It’s about catching the picture, catching that moment and you have to do whatever it takes to get it and the end result is magical.

“The cheetah was bizarre, I have to admit. It was brought in especially for the shoot and I did get very close to it.

It is quite impressive because of the unpredictability of it.

“I think the model was a bit nervous, I think anyone would be but that’s a sign of a good model. There was no fuss. At one point she was sitting on the edge of a wall and she was being blasted by sand storms. It was very windy and we were in a dangerous area of South Africa, in the middle of gangland with the cheetah. But you know she was cool, she just had her binoculars looking out to the ocean. It’s moments like those you think how different life is.”

But, surprisingly, this is the side to the 35-year-old dad-of-one that many of his clients at his small studio in the sleepy village of Otterbourne do not even know.

“I am normally quite a private person and a lot of people don’t know the crazy side to me where I go to different countries and style celebrities. I don’t think too much about it because it is a job and it is what I do. The best known celebrities are extremely down to earth and incredibly normal, wonderful people.

“When I look back, it sounds like a pretty cool life actually, but I don’t see it, it is my life.”

Flicking through pages of his jawdroppingly beautiful work, it is hard to imagine the French man got into hairdressing aged 14 by chance.

“I went to a careers advice session but I was too busy talking to the girls so I went in late and all the things that looked good like engineering were all busy with the guys crowding around.

I ended up talking to a hairdresser by chance and the guy told me you could travel the world with the job and it all started to sound really cool.

“I thought that will do the trick, magic, and I went to be a hairdresser.”

Guillaume began spending Saturdays at his family hairdresser and did not look back. He managed to secure an apprenticeship in a top salon in Caen, France, mentored by a world champion hairdresser, before moving to the UK in 2001 where he worked as technical director for Guy Kremer salon in Winchester before opening up Guillaume Vappereau five years ago.

But, despite his star-studded successes so far, it is undoubtedly his love for making ordinary people get a confidence boost from a new hairstyle that keeps him styling day in day out.

Guillaume, who said if he could only style one more person he would create a classic French bob with a twist, said: “It is my passion. It’s everything, it’s making people feel good. It is that social aspect.

“You can transform people and help them to feel better about themselves.

“There is nothing better than when you finish styling somebody and they are all happy and smiley.

“For me it is recognising people’s individuality, we are not all the same and I like it when people are different rather than conform to a certain style.”

And what about the future?

“I don’t make long term plans”, Guillaume said. “But I will keep doing what I am doing because I am loving it.”