{"id":237316,"date":"2026-01-10T05:31:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T05:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/237316\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T05:31:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T05:31:18","slug":"how-a-wicklow-man-went-from-backyard-cuts-in-lockdown-to-barber-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/237316\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Wicklow man went from backyard cuts in lockdown to Barber of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Male Barber of the Year Kealan Delaney from Arklow with Social Media Star awardee Jamie Duffy at the Irish Barber Awards 2025 at The Sugar Club in Dublin.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/daf572ba-c5a3-4b98-9f4a-467e0ae17469.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Male Barber of the Year Kealan Delaney from Arklow with Social Media Star awardee Jamie Duffy at the Irish Barber Awards 2025 at The Sugar Club in Dublin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A 22-year-old Wicklow man has capped off a whirlwind year by being crowned Male Barber of the Year at the Irish Barber Awards, marking a major milestone on a journey that began cutting his brother\u2019s hair during lockdown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Still coming to terms with the massive industry nod he received at The Sugar Club, Arklow native Kealan Delaney could scarcely have imagined that a hobby born out of necessity at the height of Covid would lead to a job at a leading Galway barbershop, a sizeable social media following, and the validation of his peers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Male Barber of the Year Kealan Delaney from Arklow with Social Media Star awardee Jamie Duffy at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,5718,61,60],"class_list":["post-237316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-eoin-mac-raghnaill","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}