WHEN THE TALKING JUST HAS TO STOP

Froghill’s most decorated man has a long day ahead of him tomorrow.

For while everyone else is going about their business, Vince Crotchett, of Traubert’s Heath, will be having laser surgery to remove every one of his 278 tattoos.

“Vince will be my one and only customer tomorrow,” said Ken Dudd, proprietor of the Tatty Bye ink removal clinic in Dial Street, “it’s going to be an all-day job.”

Mr. Crotchett, a freelance potato trainer who got his first tattoo at the age of three, decided on the drastic course of action after his body art began talking out loud.

“It started about a year ago,” recalled the 56-year-old, “I woke up from a dream about birds singing to realise that the noise was actually happening in the room.”

A brief investigation revealed that the sound was coming from a tattoo of two swallows on his right forearm. It continued for about five minutes before stopping of its own accord.

“At the time, I didn’t think too much of it,” he said, “I’d had quite a heavy night with the lads down the pub and I just put it down to that.”

It became apparent that something genuinely unusual was going on a few weeks later, when Mr. Crotchett was travelling on a London tube train.

“I’d gone up to town and I was on the Bakerloo Line, when suddenly this voice said: ‘Vincent, stop picking your nose! Use your handkerchief’. It was my Mum. I have her name tattooed just above the swallows.

“And it didn’t stop there. She started complaining in a loud voice about muddy footprints on the hall carpet. She went on and on about it. People in the carriage were staring at me, I didn’t know where to look.”

The next incident occurred in a Froghill clothes shop. Mr. Crotchett was in the fitting room, trying on some reinforced ‘Maxihold’ underwear, when his Celtic Love Knot yelled out: ‘It’s too tight, it’s too tight, I can’t breathe,’ prompting a shop assistant to come and ask if he needed help.

The final straw came during the Froghill Youth Orchestra’s performance of The Rammstein Variations at the Assembly Rooms last month. The concert, conducted by Simon Rattle, CBE, was a sell-out, with live coverage on a big screen set up on Froghill Common.

“The orchestra had finished tuning up and the audience went quiet. Then Simon Rattle walked out onto the stage and took a bow,” said Mr. Crotchett, with a shudder.

“In the moment before the applause started, this Yorkshire voice announced: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…Mr. Billy Connolly’. Everybody heard it.

“It was the image of Michael Parkinson I have on my left buttock. I mean, I’ve heard of talking out of your arse but this is ridiculous!

“Anyway, all hell broke loose. People were up on their feet, booing and hissing and throwing their tubs of ice cream around. The woman in the next seat hit me around the head with her shoe.

“Simon Rattle just glared at me from under his curls and then walked off. He only came back onstage because he was enticed with a cup of tea and a plate of Hobnobs.”

It was then that Mr. Crotchett decided that the tattoos had to go. Asked by the Observer whether he would miss them, he replied: “Yes, of course. I mean, it’s like having your leg off.

“But once the tattoos are gone, I think I’ll get both cheeks pierced. That way, I’ll be able to go up onto Traubert’s Hill and play tunes when the wind is in the right direction.”