Erik Sprague aka The Lizardman is comfortable in his own skin and scale

With a fork in his tongue and corkscrew in his head, Erik Sprague loves being a lizard, he tells Ellie O’Byrne

TO BE a freak is to embrace what makes you different; I celebrate difference in people.” Erik Sprague is explaining his decision, over 20 years ago, to turn himself into a green-scaled, fork-tongued ‘Lizardman’.

Sprague’s body modifications took years and involved over 700 hours of tattooing for his full-body tattoo of green scales, as well as a surgically bifurcated tongue, filed teeth and subdermal implants in his eyebrows. But since his transformation, he’s built a career on his reptilian skin, touring as a freak-show performer specialising in sideshow acts like suspending weights from his body piercings, sword swallowing and — why not? — pushing a giant corkscrew through his head.