subscribe
/ Sign Out

Chef, footballer, barista: six careers where tattoos are now compulsory

IS your lack of ink hurting your career? Are you being turned down before interview because you haven’t got at least a sleeve? These careers are tattoo-only: 

Chef

The connection between arranging slivers of steamed fish, micro herbs and jus reductions on a plate and covering your torso in painful designs is hard to fathom but real. Overcompensating for doing a girl’s job? Possibly. Certainly it only affects men, or Nigella would have a dragon winding up her leg, jaws on her soft inner thigh. And she hasn’t.

Footballer

Running about in shorts, incredibly fit, in front of millions is as good a reason to get tattooed as any. At least it will be seen. If you earn £200k a week you have to spend it on something, it can’t be drugs or gambling, and it’s the only surface in a televised football game that isn’t sponsored. Though expect Fifa to look into that.

Sailor

Fair enough: long hours at sea, nothing to do, nothing to make art on but the bloke next to you. Historically they’d have a tattoo of a swallow to mark every 5,000 nautical miles they’d travelled. Today they have the name of their child in massive gothic letters because Beckham did it.

Barista

The economics are a conundrum. Minimum wage and you can afford that many? Even if they are those Harry Styles ones that look like you passed out pissed and all your mates drew on you. The scandalously uninked won’t find work in any decent coffee shop. They’ll be turned down flat because they deserve to go live a little first.

Roadie

If you’re accompanying a band on tour – especially a metal band – then you need the correct qualifications. Tattoos on both arms, chest, back, neck and face an advantage. Willingness to be bullied into getting the logo of the band you’re humping monitors for on your arse will get you the job, only to be regretted when you get fired for punching Blackie Lawless.

Tattooist

Necessary for your customers to trust you, though really they’re trusting whoever did your tattoos. Get some of the slicker designs from your walls to serve as a living hoarding for your own business. Spellcheck rigorously.

35-year-old woman tells mum about parking fine in hope she'll pay it

AN ADULT woman has told her mother how upset about an unfair parking fine she is in the hope her parent will step in and pay it. 

Lauren Hewitt, aged 35, sold her 64-year-old mother an entire fictitious sob story about stopping at a pharmacy to buy medicine for her toddler to make the whole parking-on-double-yellows seem so unjust no parent would be able to sit by and let it happen.

She said: “Mum’s a retired Boomer, she’s got loads of money. I’m her only daughter and I’m suffering. Surely she can come through with the 60 quid.

“Not saying she has to, obviously, just that it would be a nice gesture, like when she paid my roaming charges after Tenerife or when she replaced my straighteners after I’d moaned about them for three months. It’d make me feel cherished and cared for.

“She still buys my brother’s socks and he’s 31. Just because I’m married with two children, a decent job and a mortgage doesn’t mean I don’t like to be looked after. It’s like a hug, really. One that needs to be freely given in the next 14 days or it goes up to £120.”

Mum Sandra said: “The little shit’s not getting round me this time. This isn’t going to be when she kept recommending The Crown so she could piggyback on my Netflix password.

“However I will buy my grandson a velvet smoking jacket he’ll look just adorable in for £80.” 

Next story ›