Blimey...

If its for your ex-rocker barber how about 'Not Fade Away' by Jim Dodge? - a rock 'n' roll road novel featuring a white cadillac once intended as a love token for the Big Bopper, an insurance scam, hitchikers, tow truck drivers and a large quantity of amphetamines.

If it for the customers I was going to reccomend 'The Voice Imitator' by Thomas Bernhard -- very short (and brilliant) short stories, though not necessarily a book to be read around sharp objects.

More to the point can you reccomend your barber?

At the back of one of William Goldman's excellent books on Hollywood - either Adventures in the Screen Trade or Which Lie Did I Tell - there's a bit where Goldman writes a screenplay based on the story of a genius barber, and then gets fellow movie professionals to critique it. They're both great books, but the screenplay is really, really, really bad - of course, because if it was any good, Goldman wouldn't have stuck it in the back of a book, but would have sold the rights instead. So your barber (not barbour, though how much more romantic that sounds) could enjoy the Hollywood gossip, and then scoff knowingly at the ludicrousness of the barber "film", giving him both enjoyment and a sense of superiority at the same time.

Flea Palace has some excellent hairdressing scenes, you could give him a signed copy.