GREEK Orthodox hairdresser Councillor Nick O'Hare is Bexley's new mayor.
The Tory councillor for Blendon and Penhill ward and his wife, Maria, were deputy mayor and mayoress last year, and are the first to be elected directly from deputy to mayor since 1969.
Cllr O'Hare has chosen Bexley Alzheimer's Society and Demelza House children's hospice as the charities to benefit from his Mayor's Appeal.
Born to poor parents on the Greek island of Chios, he was sent to live with his Greek aunt who was living in England, aged 13.
She married an English engineer and the couple eventually adopted him.
He taught his wife, a Greek Cypriot, to be a hairdresser and they have worked together for more than 25 years.
They moved to Bexley in the 1980s and have two daughters.
The couple now own and run a health clinic in Bexleyheath.
Originally a Conservative, Councillor O'Hare turned to the Liberal Democrats in 1997, and served as a Lib Dem councillor on Bexley Council for seven years, before returning to the Tory fold in 2005.
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