A hairdresser whose customers could pay for sex as well as a haircut and blowdry won a cut in her jail term at the Court of Appeal.

Chunxia Bao, 39, of East Street, Epsom, ran a brothel above her salon in Guildford, making hundreds of thousands of pounds in profits from the two hookers who worked for her.

At Guildford Crown Court in July she was handed an 18-month jail term after pleading guilty three months earlier to managing a brothel and possession of criminal proceeds. On Monday her lawyers argued that new guidelines instigated between her plea of guilty and her sentence meant she received a much longer jail term than she had initially expected.

Although Mr Justice Aikens, sitting with Lord Justice Latham and Mr Justice Grigson, rejected that ground of appeal as "unarguable", they did say that Bao had got too long because of her guilty plea.

Mr Justice Aikens observed that Bao, who has a young son, had not forced the women to work for her, and they were not underage.

Cutting the sentence to 12 months, the judge said Bao's sentence was "manifestly excessive".

The court heard that the profit from the combined brothel and hairdressing business had raked in around £200,000.

Bao, who speaks no English, had spent £30,000 on advertising in local newspapers and yellow pages.

She had previously been fined £1,000 by magistrates for managing a brothel in Southsea between October 2003 and April 2004.