Matt Lodder

Tattooists have been using what we call flash for over 100 years.

Those are those designs you see on the wall.

There are various technological ways, and now it's pretty straightforward to transfer those onto the skin and tattoo over them.

Yeah, it's difficult to know exact numbers, but it's probably about 35-40% now, I think.

Certainly under 35s, it's roughly about 35-40%.

I mean, that's up from about 20 years ago, it was closer to 25%, something like that.

And back in the 1930s, it was something like 1 in 10, which is probably even higher than people imagine.

But yeah, current estimates are it's something like...

one in three in the UK and the US.

You're in the minority now.

One of the sayings is that tattoo is a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling, right?

The way I sort of combat that is if you go to, I don't know, the National Gallery in London or the Louvre in Paris, they've had the same paintings on the wall since the 1800s.

If you pick the right thing, if you get a good piece of art, if you're comfortable with that, then regret is very low.

I mean, the number of people that regret getting tattooed is actually

I think the last numbers of people who have tattoos who regret having them is about 18%.

So it's about one and a half in 10.

But most of those people don't regret being tattooed.

It's just what they're tattooed with.

It's a good lesson to be careful and think about it and get the right thing.

But it's funny how the permanence for people who are tattooed and certainly people who are heavily tattooed, that becomes much less of a concern, I think.