As a confirmed critic of modern tattoos, who sounded off in these very pages about the ugly plague of body tats infesting our streets, I might be expected to disapprove of the latest manifestation of the fashion – the habit of many athletes taking part in the Paris Olympics to adorn themselves with the distinctive five interlocking rings of the Games’ logo: what I’m calling the ‘champ stamp’.
In fact, the athletes have such beautiful bodies – young, toned and fit – and the rings themselves have such a pleasing symmetry that I can only approve and applaud the discreet addition of the logo to their rippling musculatures. As they spring into action on the racing track or diving board, these athletes do not remotely resemble the ambling lumps of Stilton cheese who mostly sport contemporary tattooing.
The logo on the Olympians is more akin to the war wounds of the Agincourt veterans lauded by the King in Shakespeare’s Henry V, who strip their sleeves to show their scars in their dotage as a way of saying ‘We were there upon St Crispin’s Day’.
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