Early Celtic culture revolved around body art, done with Woad, leaving a blue design on the skin. Spirals were common, and lines forming complex braids which weave across themselves symbolize the connection of all life. The body of a 5,000-year old tattooed man -‘ötzi the ice man’- was found in 1991, embedded within a glacier in the Austrian alps. This corpse has 57 tattoos, possibly medicinal in application, comprising a cross on the inside of the left knee, six straight lines above the kidneys and numerous parallel lines on the ankles.

Bizarre and sometimes beastly as this body art can be, it is as old as civilization, and more popular today than it ever was in the past, with every celebrity having at least one tattoo somewhere. Every picture tells a story, they say, and some really can speak volumes about the person wearing it..