Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Dad’s a sight for sore eyes.. and chest.. legs back.. head.. feet.. arms
£28,000 cost of Chris’ 600 tattoos
A MAN who has spent £28,000 covering almost his entire body with tattoos said he’s fed up of strangers mocking him in the street.
Chris Dalzell, 33, got his first when he was 16 and has had 600 since including on his eyelids.
The chef, from Bangor, Co Down, added when he finds a bare patch of skin, he gets it inked as soon as possible.
But he admits his face tattoos – which he started in 2016 – have left him open to ridicule.
But Chris, doesn’t regret any of his artwork – in fact he’s booked in for another six-hour session next week.
He wants to get every inch of himself covered in tattoos including his eyeballs, the soles of his feet and even his penis.
And Chris is quite prepared to suffer for his body art. He said: “I’m fascinated with the pain of tattoos.
“When I got my eyelids done I was blind for three days.
“I walk down the street and they don’t even wait for me to walk past, they’ll just say, ‘Look at the state of his face’.
“The impression was, if you had tattoos it was gang-related. “Especially in Northern Ireland where gangs are associated with terrible violence.
“Just because I’m covered head to toe in tattoos it doesn’t mean I’m in any way violent.
WRONG
“Sometimes people will speak to me – by the time we’ve finished they’ll say, ‘I was completely wrong about you’.”
Chris revealed he has had 48 hours of tattooing on his face alone, 120 hours on each arm and an excruciating 160 hours on his left leg.
His first image was tribal skull design but the “turning point” was when he had a skull inked across his face.
He added: “Once you go to the face it completely changed the way you look.
“But I still feel the same as I did before I had it done. I forget I have the tattoos on my face. I’m the same person inside.”
Chris, who lives with partner Ruth, stepson Jamie, seven, and two-year-old daughter Jessica said he never expected his tattoos would make him such a target for judgment.
He added: “It never even crossed my mind. I didn’t think about how people would react. If I’d sat down and thought about it I might have done it differently.”
But the chef said he finds peace when he’s under the needle.
He added: “My daughter has had health problems. At the time getting tattoos was almost a coping mechanism.
“She was going through such pain in hospital. I’d go into the tattoo shop and say, ‘What’s the most painful place to get tattooed?’ And they’d say the face so I’d say, ‘give me that then’.
“It sounds silly but I felt like I was taking a bit of pain away from her.” Chris says he wants to share his message with the world on his own terms – that it’s OK to be different.
He said: “I just want to be treated like a person. It has affected me. I work as a chef, I have done since I was 14 - I’ve even done work for Jamie Oliver.
“I give CVS to people and they’ll invite me for a trial shift. I always reiterate, ‘I am covered with tattoos’ and they’ll say ‘Oh, we have other
candidates’.”