SALE’S kind-hearted barber has helped over 200 of our local homeless in his annual winter event.

Ged King, owner of Skullfades Barber and founder of the Skullfades foundation, that works tirelessly to help our homeless, hit the streets of Manchester with his team to give haircuts, food, warm clothes, sleeping bags and specialist advice.

Ged is known across Manchester for the work he does with the homeless, and regularly goes out on the streets to give the homeless haircuts. Around 10 other barbers and hairdressers from Skullfades, Chris King Barber Shop and H by H Hairdressers attended with Ged on November 19.

Ged said: “It was a brilliant day, it was so busy and I’m still coming down from it. There was a lot of hard graft put into making this a successful day, I was up until 2am everyday leading up to the event to sort the donations – it takes a lot of time and organisation.

“This year was definitely better than last – we helped around 200 homeless. We went with vans full of stuff and by the end because of the amount of ordinary people that turned up on the day we also left with a van full of stuff that we can use in our next events – we’re also going to donate to a refugee camp.”

Other local businesses pulled together to help the event. Boohoo provided a van full of warm clothing, El-Boliche in Sale provided food, Omega Glasses in Altrincham donated glasses for those who needed them, Pets Own provided food, treats and coats for the dogs on the street, Emerging futures provided specialist addiction coaches and local band, The Prose provided music on the day.

Ged said: “The amount of smiles I saw on that day is ridiculous, for them this is really special treatment. They’re so used to living in old clothes and the fact, we could give them brand new clothes and make them feel so special is an amazing feeling.

“Every time I go out it never fails to amaze me. This is my addiction now and if I don’t do anything I feel empty.

“It's different every time we go out and we always meet different people with different challenges. The problem with homeless now if worse than ever – it’s as bad as I’ve ever seen. At the start on our average street cut we would see about 20 people – now it’s around 60, if not more and with stopping housing benefit for 16-21-year-olds I expect the numbers will rise which is why it is so important more than ever that we do something now.

“Everyone can do something to help. I know charities are working hard to get people off the streets but it’s also important to give people what they need to survive on the streets and hopefully we have helped a lot more people survive this winter.”

Locals have taken to Facebook to praise Ged. One woman said: "Just got back from your winter event, and I have to say, I’m blown away at how big some people’s hearts are. Yes, I took bags of clothes and sleeping bags but that’s nothing compared to what I’ve seen today. Such special volunteers handing out clothes, food etc, everyone chatting away, so happily and the amazing Skullfades barbers cutting people’s hair. It truly was a very humbling experience."