My rose tattoo cost as much as a small car reveals Cheryl
GETTING a giant tattoo on your bottom shouldn’t be a decision to take lightly.
And when Cheryl Cole displayed an expansive rose design inked on her derriere last year, many asked the question: Why?
Now the pop star has revealed it was part of to-do list she compiled after contracting a life-threatening disease. And she has also disclosed that the elaborate tattoo cost her as much as a small car.
Miss Cole, 30, said she drew up the list after recovering from malaria following a trip to Tanzania in 2010.
‘After I had malaria I created a ‘****-it list’ because life’s too short and the tattoo was on the list,’ she
‘He was worth it’
explained. She spent a reported 15 hours with US celebrity tattoo artist Nikko Hurtado, who is believed to charge £250 an hour, putting the overall cost at £3,750.
Asked about how much she spent on the design, Miss Cole said: ‘He’s an exceptional artist and he was worth it. It was in the £1,000s, probably the cost of a small car.’
The former Girls Aloud singer first revealed a picture of her tattoo during the band’s reunion tour last year.
It received mixed reviews on Twitter, with many questioning whether such an obtrusive design could be real.
But Miss Cole is no stranger to the tattooist’s needle. As well as a barbed wire design on her thigh, she has a tribal symbol on her right hand and a but- terfly inked on her back. She also has Mrs C written on her neck – a reference to her marriage to her footballer ex-husband Ashley Cole – which she reportedly plans to have removed.
Appearing on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show last night, Miss Cole also told how she was left exhausted after Girls Aloud broke up last year, and took her first holiday in ten years.
She said: ‘I’d had a solo tour and then toured with Girls Aloud so I took a year off to be with my family. I did party a lot. I needed to let loose and it was the best thing I could do.’
Miss Cole is now preparing to release her latest solo album, Only Human, next month, and she will return to the X Factor judging line-up in August, three years after she left the reality show.
She claimed there was ‘a lot of grovelling’ involved in getting her back on the panel, largely by the show’s boss Simon Cowell.