Scratch and Stiff

Artist's impression of Blood's design (left) together with an example of a typical

design that might be chosen to hide the original tattoo (right) 

A tattoo artist in Petersfield is looking to set a new world record in a thinly veiled attempt to drum up business.

Drew Blood, owner of Broken Needles tattoo parlour in Chapel Street told us “We tried advertising and that didn’t work so we thought we’d try this new approach, which, on the face of it, can't fail.

“First of all we announce that we are going for a world record and say we are only doing it for charity. To be fair we are asking all of our customers to make a small donation, other than blood of course so we should actually make some money for our chosen charity Save A Squaddie.

“Then we ramp up interest by emphasising that we are trying to bring the record home from America, which should get the local press interested.

“And finally, and this is the clever bit, we give all our customers a 50% discount voucher for future tattoos at our parlour”.

To beat the current record Blood must tattoo 802 people or more in a 24-hour period, no easy task. Allowing for the odd break and the chance to hose himself down, this means each customer will only need to endure pain for an average of 1 minute and 22 seconds.

Newswire asked Blood if this was really feasible.

“I’ll be applying an appropriate motif, in two colours in 80 seconds...  after the first few hours I’m bound to be feeling a bit jaded, so it’s bound to be a bit of a rush.

“If I try to complete smart looking tats (industry speak for tattoos) I won’t have a chance at getting the 800 plus people through the door, so this will need to be more of an unrecognisable blob.

“That’s how I’m hoping to cash in. Very few will actually be happy with the 80 second etching on their arm, head, thigh or arse and many will come back asking to change the small design into a something less embarrassing.

"The repair work will take a lot more than 80 seconds and for this I will be stiffing them. Kerching!