Mary Heinz, a 70-year-old ‘former hellraiser’ from Merseyside has claimed to regret getting her entire body covered in tattoos.

In an interview with pensioners’ magazine ’65+’ – which she insists wasn’t done just to supplement her meagre pension – Mary says:

“My parents always told me: you’ll regret it when you’re older. And they were totally right. It’s really difficult to see my flabby, grey, inelastic skin under the vibrant multi-coloured complexity of my unique self-designed tattoos. Every time I look in the mirror and squint really, really hard I am reminded by my tattoos of my misspent youth. All that fun I had, and all I’ve got to show for it is the work of art that disfigures my hunched frail shell of a body.

“It’s such a shame for others to see my body, such as my doctor or my husband of 44 years who asked me out because he liked my tattoos, because obviously they’re disgusted by the appalling destruction of my failing, saggy torso.

“I am consumed with so much regret. I should never have got tattoos when I was young and in the physical prime of my life, because now I’m past it they totally ruin all the fun I apparently could be having.”

Mary has shrugged off claims that she was being relentlessly sarcastic in her interview.

“I meant every word. In fact, I’m even going on Tattoo Fixers this year to get all of my tattoos altered. I’m going to have my idiosyncratic inks covered by the reptilian skin of an untattooed 70-year-old woman. Maybe then I can go unnoticed like a normal, boring pensioner who secretly regrets everything deep down inside.”