Tattoo artist who has inked 100 footballers names the 'worst thing' that's happened to tattooing
Veteran tattoo artist Lal Hardy has seen a lot of changes over his 47-year career.
It's impossible for the London-based tattoo maestro to keep track of the thousands of pieces of art he has etched onto people's skin over the decades.
Hardy, 67, even counts around 100 footballers among the throngs of clients he's had in years gone by, with the avid Tottenham Hotspur fan particularly enjoying inking the likes of Jermaine Defoe, Kyle Walker, Benoit Assou-Ekkotto and Jermaine Jenas.
To be in the game so long takes a lot of perseverance and adaptation, with every day a learning curve.
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There's not much Hardy hasn't seen, from people wanting the Hawk-Tuah girl tattooed on them to misspelt names and everything in between.
But with nearly 50 years in the game, he's called the rise of mobile phones the 'worst' thing to happen to tattooing.
Mobile phones can be a real pain when trying to tattoo someone
It doesn't take a genius to realise you should probably sit pretty still when getting a tattoo done.
Artists always try to be alert to any sudden movements, but they're not the Flash and an unexpected lunge could have painful and permanent consequences. While it's always been a danger, it's something that's been made even worse now everyone is hooked to their phones.
"The worst thing that's happened to tattooing is people with their telephones," Hardy tells LADbible ahead of the Big London Tattoo Show on September 4th-6th.
"Being on their phones, dropping their phones. Please sit still, you know what I mean?"
Reaching for a mobile has become a worrying instinct to a lot of us, engrained by the little dopamine hits we get every time we scroll.
So much so that people can reach for their phones despite having an intricate pattern being stabbed onto their body.
"Sometimes people forget that you're drawing with a needle on their skin," Lal continues.
"So we always say to people, please sit still. People do like to look at their phones all the time. All of us do. But one of them things is you need to sit still and concentrate while you're being tattooed."
Lal has grown accustomed to people moving mid-flow but you can't stop disaster from happening every time.
"I've got what they call the death grip. I tend to hold people quite tight when I'm tattooing them," he continues.
"Normally you can stop [when someone moves], but, there are tattooists that will tell you, they've had little bits where they might have tattooed the person somewhere else, if they've moved their arm or that."
People are lot better at getting tattoos now
Though fighting people's urges to grasp from their phone may be a constant battle, Hardy has actually noticed that people tend to be a lot more composed when it comes to dealing with the pain of a tattoo than they were back when he started.
"Nowadays, believe it or not, it's not as bad as it used to be," he said when asked about the big changes he's noticed in tattooing, and honing in on how people act in the chair.
"Years ago, there was a lot of peer pressure with tattooing, I feel.
"Now it's open to everyone, grandma's granddads, anyone. But back when I started, it was mainly an 18 to 35, male-dominated clientele. Guys would say to their mates: 'Oh, it's going to kill you.'
"So they go in already hyped up, so we'd get people, we've had people p**s themselves, people be sick, people faint.
"But nowadays, people see that it's not something that you've got to fear. They seem to be okay with it. "We've had a few people that make noises or shake a bit, but you have to be compassionate with them and understand it, talk them through it and get them through it."
Who said millennials were softer than boomers, eh?
Daniel Murphy