Great-gran Ressa’s hooked on body art

A great-gran has stunned her family by covering her body in tattoos she got her first at the age of 60.

Needle-mad Ressa Brady, 64, has amassed 17 inkings in just four years. The habit has already cost her a whopping £2,500 and she’s planning more in 2014.

The Area Operations Manager for Glasgow Council firm Cordia said she only developed the tattoo addiction after deciding she didn’t want to go on a cruise to celebrate her 60th.

Ressa, who lives in Knightswood, Glasgow and has three children, five grandchildren and one great-grandson, said: “A lot of my pals went on cruises when they turned 60.

“I wanted to mark the day, too, but can’t go on holidays like cruises because I’ve three dogs and a parrot to look after and I don’t like leaving them. I don’t drink or smoke so I thought, why not a tattoo? I’d always wanted one but was too much of a scaredy-cat before.

“My husband Brad got his first when he was just 17. My twin sons and daughter have tattoos, too. They used to tease me that I was too scared to get one.

“But something snapped when I turned 60. I thought if I left it any longer I might be too wrinkly to get it done!”

She added: “I’m into the rockabilly scene so decided to get a picture of Bettie Page on my forearm. She was the original pin-up girl in the 1950s and it was one I’d always wanted.

“My kids were surprised but I think they just thought it was a late mid-life crisis!

“They couldn’t believe it when I got a second, then a third. It was my intention just to get one but something clicked. I started seeing more and more that I wanted.

“I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to it but there is a compulsion to get more.”

Ressa’s haul of body artwork includes four Japanese tattoos, a picture of one of her dogs and a pink cancer ribbon to mark her daughter-in-law’s successful breast cancer fight.

She also has an all-seeing eye and six butterflies to represent her grandchildren and great grandchild.

But she insisted: “I’m nowhere near finished. I’m planning on getting full-sleeves on both arms but that will need to wait I’ve just moved house and doing it up is the priority.

“My friends are gobsmacked. One of them jokes that when I die she’ll hang up my skin as wallpaper!”

Ressa isn’t the first over-60 to develop an tattoo addiction. Last week, our columnist Margaret Clayton wrote that she was toying with having a rose tattooed on her ankle in the New Year. Question Time presenter David Dimbleby recently shocked fans by getting a scorpion tattooed on his right shoulder at the age of 75. And earlier this month, former Tory leader Michael Howard’s wife Sandra, 73, revealed a butterfly tattoo on her collarbone.

In February a woman from Dorset is believed to have become the oldest person in Britain to go under the needle for a tattoo.

Winifred Turner, 92, decided on the inking as a tribute to her late husband, Jim.