Like many people born in the late 90s, I spent a lot of my childhood in front of the ‘family computer’.

I remember stumbling across the remnants of BME online — at the time most of the servers had long since disappeared, and it was only little fragments of the forums that were still discoverable through the Internet Archive.

I saw images of tongue splits, scarification, subdermal implants, and all kinds of body modification, and absolutely fell in love with the world of it.

That fascination stayed with me.

Before joining the Blue Lotus team, I worked as a computer programmer for several years.

I’d had the vast majority of my own piercings done here at Blue Lotus Body Piercing, so the studio already felt like home!

Nicole asked if I wanted to learn to pierce, and now here I am, which still feels a little surreal in the best possible way.

This is a very mean question. I miss my bridge piercing dearly, but I’m enjoying not worrying about getting makeup stuck in it any more. I also miss my tongue piercing dearly, but I’m enjoying having my tongue split. 

I suppose I’m very proud of healing (well, it’s nearly healed…) a cartilage piercing, my lil ol’ conch. It has my first ever piece of gold jewellery: a white gold spider from Body Gems with a peridot and onyx gemmed body.

I’m from Northumberland, and growing up I’d got the bus in to the city many times over the years for various gigs (or just to drink far too much at Trillians!) Public transport wasn’t brilliant, so I was often needing to leave early just so I could get myself home. The last bus of the night was always something special.

While nights like Charnel House were unfortunately a bit before my time, over the last decade I’ve been knocking about the city proper I have very fond memories of the (still ongoing!) Stripped in Gateshead, many gigs at various venues, and of course the variety of alternative nights of all flavours flourishing in the city today

• Would you rather have one huge eye or three tiny eyes?

Three tiny eyes. I like to think it would give a larger field of vision or something like that – spiders seem to have that all figured out. Bonus, you have backup eyes if one fails.

• Do you have any phobias or what’s something you just know you’d never do!? eg: skydiving

You will not catch me willingly near any large bodies of water. We’ve got boats for that kind of thing.

• Jewellery styles are changing rapidly, what is your new favourite ‘thing’?

Whatever the piercing equivalent of ‘bold will hold’ is. I love me some simple, bold, chunky jewellery. Long spikes. Large gauge. Hefty ear weights. Stretch everything!