So what comes first: the desire to have a specific image, one so important, profound and meaningful that you need to have it inked permanently across your tricep, for all eternity, or the simple appreciation of the aesthetic of body-colouring of a certain form and dimension, regardless of its content?

Basically, do you have a burning need for a swastika somewhere on your body or do you just feel compelled to modify your body’s appearance to enhance the natural beauty it was born with?

Personally speaking, it was a combination. When I was 8 I had a Tottenham cockerel inked down my calf. Sitting on a football. The cockerel, not me, I was lying on a bed screaming. Then I had my o’level results tattooed on my foot. Only the passes, obviously, so I actually only needed one toe once I was told that ‘F’ wasn’t a pass at all. Turned out to be a great conversation piece as people on the beach ask me ‘why do have ‘woodwork: D’ on your big toe?

I then had the names of all my sexual conquests (consensual only, for future legal reasons), down the outside of my right leg. Then continuing up the inside for the later years. Extending up round to my hip and onwards to the shoulder. Those whose names are unknown were listed as ‘Princess Caroline’ because I always wanted to but felt a certain inevitability about the failure. Those who changed their names (you know who you are, KEVIN!!!) were listed as they names I was told (Kerry).

But then, after all those meaningful things, I decided I just wanted more space filled with ink. A lot more ink. More ink in fact that I then had body space for. So I decided to increase this significantly. I consulted a tattoo therapist who created the 5-point plan. Beer, loads of shit food, more beer, more food, more beer, more beer. And within a year I had doubled my effective surface area. Shaving my head obviously created another little ‘canvas’ and I was ready for some serious inkage. At which point the content was less important than space filling. Just like a newspaper.

And I went for whatever the artist suggested. Hence Christ the Redeemer across my shoulders, Elvis on my head and an Eiffel Tower on each testicle. Bruce Lee adorns my left shoulder and Lady Diana my right. Mother Theresa sits between them. With the Dalia Lama. Sitting in a 1960 Chevrolet Corvette.

And that’s the real reason I’ve come to Tenerife. It is the spiritual home of all shaven-headed fat bastards covered in tattoos.

Happy Holidays

A xxxx