Modern-day Rapunzel

In the fairytale, Rapunzel’s golden plait was the length of a tall tower until her hair was hacked off by a wicked witch.

While Aimee Chase’s mane is a slightly more manageable 3ft 6in, she is also about to hear the “snip, snap” of the scissors - and work some magic of her own to help others.

Aimee’s extraordinarily long hair, which reaches her knees, is being trimmed for the first time in her 11-years. The schoolgirl, who stands at 4ft 11in, is planning to have more than 2ft lopped off.

“I’m going up to senior school and I want to do different things with my hair,” she said. “It’s going to feel weird because I have had long hair for so long and now it’s going to be cut short.”

But not wanting her long locks to go into the bin, Aimee has decided to donate the cuttings to the Little Princess Trust, which provides wigs and hair pieces for children who suffer hair loss during cancer treatment.

Aimee, from Portchester, Hampshire, added: “At first I just thought that I would get it cut.

“But with so much hair, I don’t want it to go to waste. I’m quite proud of giving it to somebody else who could use it.” Her mother Amanda, 43, said: “People often notice the length of Aimee’s hair. We’ll be walking along the street and we will get comments. At the moment her hair is quite unmanageable, especially when she goes swimming.”

But Aimee would still have some way to go to beat the world record. In China, Xie Qiuping, 51, has been growing her hair since 1977.

It is now 18ft in length and she has hired a personal assistant just to help her wash it, which takes three hours a day.

Human hair grows roughly six inches a year at its fastest, but as it gets longer, the rate slows down.