Terry Prone: My appearance is so startling, I could close down the Dublin Portal all on my own

Not only do eyebrows go multi-directional with age, they also go white

Just as you shouldn’t drink and drive, you should always be sober when addressing the acquisition of a tattoo. Picture: iStock

One piece of advice for Leo, now that he’s announced that freedom from high office has put the longing on him for a tattoo. 

Just as you shouldn’t drink and drive, you should always be sober when addressing the acquisition of a tattoo.

This axiom comes from my American friend Angi, a tattoo artist. 

The sign on her clinic talks of permanent make-up, since she does eyebrows, eyeliners, and forever lipstick rather than Beckham-type sleeves or ankle butterflies. 

She also tattoos over pre-existing tattoos to remove them, in which area one of her best customers is a lad who about once a year goes on a bender, which results in him sporting a new tattoo the next day. 

Sober, he has no tattoo-lust. Intoxicated, nothing will keep him away from the tattoo artist.

While hangovers are common, post-drinking-factum, not many people find themselves swallowing paracetamol while looking at a heart on their biceps with the caption “Mother” or a quote from Khalil Gibran running down the back of their leg. 

As soon as he recovers, though, that’s this guy’s experience. 

He suffers severe buyers’ remorse and contacts Angi for help. Money no object. 

She confesses that on one occasion, when she was out to dinner with her husband, she spotted the drunk/tattoo guy at the bar and had to resist the temptation to go up to him and suggest he finish his drink and go home before getting inked.

Which brings us to one of the other limitations of tattoos, which relates to eyebrows. 

Getting eyebrows tattooed on you is great if you’ve been through chemo and have lost your natural brows. 

Not so great as an ageing action. 

The truth is that eyebrows — particularly in men — totally lose the run of themselves after you have survived middle age.  They turn into deranged misplaced yard brushes. Deranged in the sense that they no longer stay in line. They go everywhere. 

Think Vincent Brown or Bertie, if you’re old enough to draw up the pictures on demand. 

(If you’re too young, notch your failure up as one of the many benefits of youth.)

Not only do eyebrows go multi-directional with age, but they also go white. 

Which makes permanent make up eyebrow imprinting somewhat redundant because while the general shape and mark of an eyebrow may be on your face, courtesy of a tattoo, it gets vitiated by sprouting white hairs. 

Which is why I was dying my eyebrows last week when a client had a sudden crisis. 

This is a natural law of communications consultancy. 

You are always in the middle of something time-sensitive and deeply personal when clients throw wobblers.

Two hours later, the problem is solved and I realise that dye that should have come off after 10 minutes is now crusted on my brows like brow-shaped intensely black seagull poop. 

Repeated washings remove the expression-crippling crispy gratin topping, but that’s about the height of it. 

I look like Freida Kahlo on a bad day. 

My appearance is so startling, in a negative way, that I could close down the Dublin Portal all on my own, if I visited it. 

More anti-social behaviour, like mooning, wouldn’t be required.

I wear oversized sunglasses on the train to Cork, confident that when I turn up in the RTÉ studios, Kate, the stellar make up artist, will minimise the horror. Which she does, promising that after the following morning’s shower, I’ll be grand. 

I wouldn’t go that far, but the impact was sufficiently dampened down to not frighten children in buggies.

The sagging rear

It was at this point that I discovered the latest thing from M&S is underpants that address another problem of age: The sagging rear. 

This was a surprise to me, because, all my life, I have clearly failed to pay enough attention to my rear. 

I wouldn’t say I never noticed it, but quite honestly, it was like that old chocolate ad where people walked around with a block of their mid-section missing, the ad running with the caption “Fill that gap with Cadbury’s Snack.” 

One’s rear was to be considered only to the extent that it might prevent the front closure of a skirt or trousers. It didn’t have a brand of its own.

When the rest of you is the size of Mount Everest after a recent snowfall, the question “Does my bum look big in this?” becomes redundant.

Then along came Kim Kardashian and the rear end came to the fore, so to speak. 

Kim Kardashian brought the rear end to the fore. Picture: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

If you are into vast posteriors, more power to your ass, is my view, but you’re on your own. 

My focus has always been on the front aspect. When the Wonderbra first appeared, I thought my day was made, being somewhat under-endowed at bust level. 

Suddenly this underwear existed which came with its own fish-shaped pads you inserted into the bra, which came with little pockets to facilitate fish-pad insertion. 

The pressure of the fish-pads pushed you together, giving you brief and spurious cleavage. 

If you’ve never had permanent authentic cleavage, brief and spurious is good. 

Not perfect, admittedly, which is why I developed my own enhancements to the basic product in the form of partially-inflated balloons, which I slid into my Wonderbra before a dinner dance. 

A dinner dance was a form of torture that was discontinued, probably by international law, in the 80s. It was as much fun as a cucumber sandwich.

On this particular occasion, inflated with fish-pads and balloons, I was possessed of a manic self-confidence, which led me to accept the first invitation onto the dance-floor. 

My boyfriend held me tightly, mainly because it was a very small floor and space was limited, but his benign pressure caused the balloon on the right side to pop, which surprised him. 

“What the hell was that?” he asked. “

What did it feel like?” I replied evasively. 

“Like being a small bit shot,” he said, and I excused myself to visit the ladies’ where I restored a slightly sad balance by removing the unburst balloon from the other side and abandoned frontal improvement forever.

Scroll forward to today and M&S’s new underwear; the Wonderbra, except for your rear.

Because I haven’t paid enough attention to this area, I had not realised that losing weight and/or age cause your bottom to go flat and that flat is not currently desirable. 

For about fifteen quid, you can buy these padded brown Lycra underpants to mitigate the flatness, giving you a roundy, albeit not bouncy, backside.

People who have tried these corrective garments have posted their results online and in the main, they seem to deliver on the basics. 

In a pair of jeans, your back view will be somewhat rounder than it might be if unaided. 

On the other hand, one wearer did look as if people had posted letters down her waistband and they had gotten stuck.

I figure my eyebrows can distract from my rear and save me the fifteen quid.