Man who has covered 70% of his body in tattoos gets head tattoo after motorbike crash reminds him ‘life’s too short’

A London man whose body is 70% covered in tattoos has added to his full-body art collection with a head tattoo after a motorcycle accident in India “mangled” his arm, saying that the piece reminds him that “life’s too short”.

Martin McIver, 54, festival director of the Big London Tattoo Show, was riding a motorcycle while on holiday in India on February 11, when the front wheel locked on loose bricks and he slammed into a wall.

His friend Adem Senturk, organiser of the Turkiye Arts Festival, then got them both in a taxi from Ashwem beach to Vision Hospital in Mapusa.

When they arrived more than half an hour later, Martin said he had a “scary” four-hour surgery to reinforce the arm bones with two metal plates and five pins.

He stayed in hospital for a total of five days and started physiotherapy exercises to improve his mobility.

When Martin saw that his friend and tattoo artist, Dana Sha, was also in Goa at the time, he said the accident made him ask himself: “Why aren’t I doing the things that I want to do?”

That mentality is how Martin came to get his first ever head tattoo.

Martin, who lives in Dublin, told PA Real Life: “We talked about it and immediately we both knew exactly what the design would be.

“It kind of looks like a tyre mark, but it’s not.

“It has a lot of Eastern Asian shapes that I really like… and an arm at the bottom, which is there for symbolic reasons.”

Martin said he got his first tattoo at 25 years old following his sister’s death by suicide – a heart with flames that featured the date of her birthday.

“A lot of tattooers will recognise this as a fairly basic tattoo,” Martin said, “but it meant the world to me anyway.

“It meant even more that my best friend, Ben Stone, was doing it because he was doing his tattoo apprenticeship at the time.”

Since then, Martin said his tattoo collection “snowballed” and he now estimates around 70% of his body is covered after more than 50 tattooing sessions over three decades.

Some have deeper meanings, like a tattoo of the Hindu god Ganesh on his leg, or the Arabic script on his arm with the words power, strength, wisdom, love, clarity and honesty.

Others are more for light-hearted, like the tattoo of a ghost with a speech bubble that says “poo” or the matching shot glass he got with his friend and tattoo artist Bob Tyrell after a particularly fun pub crawl in Dublin.

“I never got any girlfriend tattoos though,” he joked. “I was too clever for that one.”

Martin loves travelling, and has gone to India regularly for more than two decades, describing it as like a “second home” to him.

But it was on one particular trip to Goa on February 11 this year that his world changed forever.

Just three hours after touching down, Martin explained how he was involved in a motorcycle accident.

“Adem and I were going to meet some friends,” Martin said, “then on the way… my front wheel basically just locked into a really loose brick on the road and separated as I went over.

“It locked the wheel and I went into a wall.

“Immediately, I looked down and saw how mangled my arm was… it was on the verge of breaking the skin and it went in two different directions.

“I didn’t think I’d ride a motorbike again.”

Martin was rushed to hospital and had an emergency surgery because his arm was broken in three places, including having two metal plates and five pins inserted.

In the aftermath of the surgery, Martin recalled: “I was very high on all the drugs… but the doctor tapped me on the shoulder and said he really tried to match up my tattoos when he was stitching my arm up.

“I just thought that it was really cool that he actually cared about my tattoos.”

Martin is thankful it has healed, his arm tattoos are still intact and he is back to riding motorcycles again.

He did not have travel insurance, so Martin said the surgery and hospital admission for five days cost him a total of £900.

For his recovery, Martin was encouraged to do exercises to build up his wrist strength and said it is “not totally back to normal yet” because he still gets “twinges” of pain sometimes, but he is very happy with how well he has healed.

Within a month of the accident, Martin decided to mark it by getting his first ever head tattoo.

He was hesitant about tattooing this area before because he described head, neck or hand tattoos as “job stoppers” – explaining that “you better be in a job that accepts that or you can have some problems” – but the accident gave him a new perspective on living in the moment.

“When I had this accident, I felt that life’s too short,” Martin said.

“How much time do we really have? And why aren’t I doing the things that I want to do?”

So on March 7, Martin’s friend Dana Sha tattooed his head, which took five hours and he said the pain was “up there” as one of the most painful of all his tattoos.

“Very rarely in life do you let somebody voluntarily hurt you,” Martin said, “I’m really happy with the tattoo.”

Martin is not a tattoo artist himself – explaining that he “can’t draw” and joking he would not “want to inflict (his) artistic skills on anybody” – but he is a “very good organiser”.

As a result, he set up a tattoo show in Manchester in the early 2010s after building up contacts in the industry from running a website called Tattoo TV, where he would interview international tattoo artists.

This has grown to Martin organising the Tattoo Tea Party in Manchester, Newcastle’s Big North Tattoo Show, the Dublin Tattoo Convention, Goa Tattoo Festival and the Big London Tattoo Show.

The latter is on this weekend, and Martin said they are expecting 500 artists to do more than 2,000 tattoos across three days.

Martin is passionate about tattoos because he believes there is still a misconception about people who have them, explaining he gets stopped at customs in airports and he “overcompensates” with politeness when checking into hotels.

“There’s so much judgment around tattoos,” Martin said, “I feel judged, especially now with my head tattoo.

“So because there’s still prejudice against it, the tattoo convention is to show a really cool, safe, artistic, creative space that anybody can come into.”

The Big London Tattoo Show will take place September 4-6 at the Excel London, hosting 500 artists exhibiting at the show. Tickets available online here: biglondontattooshow.com/tickets