Tattoo Fixers - Channel Four

Been watching the series of Tattoo Fixers on 4 On Demand (or whatever they're calling their demand service these days).

If you're thinking about getting new (or more) body art you can search a lot on-line and find out loads of information about the process physically (pain - ouch) and also in terms of design and so on. But this program really brings into focus the highs and lows - so would recommend it very much.

In particular the artists and receptionist have a great line in banter and every now and then the stories behind the tattoo's can be funny, tragic and life affirming - for example the ex-Royal Marine in Episode 3 who had a 'You'll Never Walk Alone" tattoo on his leg which he had to have amputated following an IED explosion - the tattoo now reads 'You'll Never Walk" - which he disproved by winning two gold medals in the Invictus Games. He didn't want to cover up or change that tattoo - so the guys did him a new tattoo with the following two lines from the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley :

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit From pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.^[1]

The word 'invictus' is latin for unconquered. Rich Purnell truly is a steely eye missile man.