Body art tattoos

SARAH VINE: Body art? No, tattoos are hideous self-harm

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Art? England's Ross Barkley and his tattoos

Arms folded, jaws clenched, they stare down the camera with all the self-confidence of the fittest and the best.
Their hair is neat, their shirts crisp, the three lions on their chests suitably rampant. There’s just one problem: the tattoos.
Great swirls of ink encase their biceps and forearms. Arsenal’s Jack Wilshere has had his arm-work mostly dedicated to his family.
Twenty-year-old Ross Barkley, by contrast, has used his to illustrate his more contemplative side. On the outside of his arm, in Chinese script, the word ‘fengxian’, meaning ‘to devote’. And at the base of his hand, a quotation from none other than the Greek philosopher Aristotle: ‘No notice is taken of little evil. But when it increases it strikes the eye.’
Wow. Who knew that beneath that rugged exterior lurked the sensitive soul of a classicist?
Now we see why he almost missed the bus on the first day of training in Rio on Monday: he was so busy applying Aristotelian logic to the likelihood of a 4-2-3-1 formation securing a victory in England’s opening game against Italy, he lost track of time.
Perhaps I’m being a bit mean and this young man really is a budding Greek philosopher. Or perhaps, like so many of his generation, he’s just got swept up in the ghastly modern mania for tattoos.
Personally, I find the whole thing mystifying. If any child of mine gets one, it’ll be the white spirit and wire wool, and no mistake.
Also, please can we stop calling them ‘body art’. They’re not. What they are is the British obsession with class made flesh.  
When I was Barkley’s age, tattoos were the preserve of sailors, Hell’s Angels and ex-cons.
Then, in the mid-Nineties, they began appearing on the well-heeled ankles of the hipper scions of the middle classes.

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Jack Wilshere and Ross Barkley: When I was their age, tattoos were the preserve of sailors and Hell's Angels

It was all part of that embarrassing ‘mockney’ trend, where middle class kids decided to stop trying to be posh and hang out instead among the ‘common people’.
And so they practised their glottal stops and got tattoos: risque, dangerous, a new way to rebel.

 

 

These footballers’ tattoos are a similar thing, only in reverse. They are a way for young men who feel disorientated by their huge pay-packets and lavish lifestyles to anchor themselves to what they still consider to be their class. To say: ‘I may drive a Lamborghini, but I’m still a man of the people.’ David Beckham was one of the first. A Leytonstone boy, he grew up to become eye-poppingly rich. But his tattoos and accent are a perennial reminder of his working class roots.
But — and this applies especially to women — there’s a darker side to this tattoo obsession. Designs of such ugliness they seem almost like a form of self-harm.
Think of poor, frail Amy Winehouse, her emaciated limbs decorated like a navvy’s; think of the ethereal, fragile Peaches Geldof.
The more beautiful the girl, the bigger the tattoo. If God had given me even half of what Cheryl Cole has, I wouldn’t have defaced the juiciest bit with a hideous rose.
Rihanna, Cara Delevingne, Rita Ora: they’re all the same.
Like Britney Spears shaving her hair, or Marianne Faithfull destroying her looks with drugs, it’s as though they are trying to spoil their greatest gift. And where celebrities lead, the fans slavishly follow.
So at the weekend there was the hideous sight of Emily Wood, 25, a former pupil at £14,000-a-year Sutton High School, at Epsom racecourse sporting all-over tattoos.
Mrs Wood owns a tattoo parlour where, surprise, surprise, her clients include several famous footballers.
No doubt she can look forward to a lucrative summer as young fans queue up to emulate their World Cup heroes by disfiguring their bodies with quotes from ancient philosophers they’ve never even heard of.

 

In a cunning publicity stunt, a baker has created a Marmite cupcake, which apparently is dividing opinion, as these things do. Truth is, American-style cupcakes are disgusting whatever the flavour. Even my children won’t touch them — and they’ll eat anything.

 

Rich boy Clegg and his very nasty tax

Ever since Nick Clegg officially became the Most Unpopular Politician of All Time, he’s been searching for ways to change this.
So, in an act of stunning unoriginality, he delivered a speech on Monday attacking the rich and promising a ‘mansion tax’.
Clegg was vague about his definition of both ‘rich’ and ‘mansion’. (I can help, Nick: a rich person is someone who went to Westminster school; a mansion can be a chateau in France or chalet near Klosters — both of which your family own. Personally, I don’t object to either, but since you clearly do, it’s best to be clear).

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Nasty: Nick Clegg wants us all to think he would be targeting the oligarchs. But for those who have worked hard all their lives, saved and become relatively affluent, the mansion tax will be a genuine source of anxiety

Clegg wants us all to think he would be manfully targeting the oligarchs and bankers. But I can’t see Roman Abramovich quaking in his Salvatore Ferragamo loafers. For the truly wealthy, losing a few grand is nothing.
But for those who have worked hard all their lives, saved, and who now find themselves in positions of relative affluence, the mansion tax will be a genuine source of anxiety.
Instead of being able to enjoy the fruits of their labour, they will find themselves squeezed dry to plug the gap in the nation’s finances caused by years of profligate spending on layabouts such as White Dee from Benefits Street.
Take an elderly couple who live a few streets away from me. They’ve lived in their two-up, two-down terrace for 50 years. They bought it long before the area was fashionable, and probably paid just a few thousand for it.
Their kids are grown-up and gone and they lead a quiet but active existence, tending to their garden and strolling backwards and forward to the local bowling green.
But if local sales prices are anything to go by, their house is now worth over £1 million — which technically makes them millionaires.
Rich. Bad. Evil. And punishable by tax.
Except, of course, they’re not. They’re just a nice, old couple who have the right to enjoy their final years without being given sleepless nights by politicians trying to resurrect their ratings.

 

Boris Johnson has bought three second-hand water cannons (from Germany, at the knock-down rate of £218,000), even though Theresa May has not yet officially authorised their use. Never mind: they can always be used to hose down a few egos at Westminster.

 

Hurrah for a tipsy Goddess

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It may not be dignified, but I love this photo of Nigella

Of course, it’s not terribly dignified but I love this picture of Nigella, rolling out of a charity night last week. 
Just look at that sheepish smile which says: ‘I know, I know, I’ve had one too many glasses of wine — but I’m my own woman now, and besides — don’t I look ravishing in this lovely midnight-blue dress?’ 
So different from the gaunt figure in the grip of a controlling husband that we saw last year. Good for her. I hope she went home, ate half the contents of her fridge and then fell asleep on the sofa and snored until morning.
At the start of this year, a friend of mine was diagnosed as being pre-diabetic.
Despite being an avowed bon viveur, he had always enjoyed an iron constitution. So the news came as a big blow.
He was prescribed a variety of pills, and told to start taking them immediately. Being of an age, however, he disobeyed his doctor’s orders.
Disobeyed — but not ignored. Instead of swallowing the tablets and carrying on as before, he embarked on a serious lifestyle change. For three months, he gave up booze and rich food.
They were, he told me, the most boring three months of his life. But at the end of it, the news was good: he was heading out of the danger zone.
Now that a third of British adults are thought to be pre-diabetic, the message from GPs should be clear: wherever possible, shape up.
Self-control is free; if we want the NHS to stay that way, it’s up to everyone to start exercising a bit of it.

 

Meat should be a luxury

I like Jay Rayner, food critic and MasterChef guest judge, despite his curmudgeonly demeanour. I also agree with him when he says a farmers’ market chicken is a luxury — but for different reasons.
Until relatively recently, all meat was a luxury. Not just for financial reasons, but for sound health ones, too: recent studies have shown that daily meat consumption may even be linked to cancer, especially bowel and ovarian.
It’s only because supermarkets have pushed down prices by selling intensively reared poultry that the cost of a real bird — one that hasn’t been pumped full of antibiotics and kept in horror conditions — seems extortionate.
Britain is obese, and the reason is we eat too much junk food. Quality, not quantity, is the key.

 

This Sunday, men the length and breadth of the country will be receiving gifts they neither want nor need.
Gear-stick wine-stoppers, chocolate cigars, novelty socks and cufflinks— all in the name of Father’s Day.
Why waste your money when most would be happy with a kiss, a wonky card and a free pass for all the England games?

 

A volley of silly sexism

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Deserving: Andy Murrau's new coach Amelie Mauresmo (pictured) is a capable former world No. 1

I turned on the radio on Monday, and found myself transported back to the Fifties. A woman — oh, the effrontery of it! — had been announced as Andy Murray’s new coach.
It was one thing being coached by a woman as a child (Murray’s mum, therefore also regrettably female), said a male pundit, quite another entrusting your international career to a girl.

The fact that Amelie Mauresmo is a former world No. 1 — which is more than can be said for most other coaches — presumably doesn’t count?