
Hmmm, I like V05 matt hair clay, its the business for sculpting your hair into weird and wonderful shapes and it holds all day, it looks really off putting in the tub - like grey putty, but its awesome.
The wet look gels are always a bit sloppy for my liking and never have the stiffness for good long lasting spikes, check out 'Savers' if you have one in your town they sell most of the fancy hair gels and clays for a lot cheaper than superdrug, boots etc so he could get two different types then and experiment with what gets the best effect on his hair.
My vote for stiff spikes goes with hair clay though, I find it washes out of my hair pretty easily too