Seventy-four-year-old Isobel Varley has 93 percent of her body covered in tattoos. She is the Guinness Book of World Records’s  most tattooed senior woman. Varley got her first tattoo in 1986 at a tattoo convention at the Hammersmith Palais at the age of 49. According to Guinness, Varley had more than 300 designs inked over a 20-year period. Varley reports, “The only areas not completely tattooed are my face, the soles of my feet, my ears and some areas on my hands.”

This, er, colourful character was born in Yorkshire, and her addiction to ink started late in life, but today almost every square centimetre of her body is decorated in artwork, including the inside of her nether regions and the ends of her toes.

“I’ve always wanted to be different, and although I don’t like pain, I do love the arousing buzz,” she proudly claims.
Originally Isobel was only going to have one tattoo — her first was a small bird on her right shoulder blade – but she immediately fell in love with it, and so her addiction began. The mother-of-one has spent 500 hours under the needle so far.

At 74 she now wants to get the remaining bits of skin finished.

“Although I have some tattooing on my head, forehead and cheeks, I do not expect to fully cover my face,” she says.
Her favourite design is a family of tigers lying on her stomach.

She also has a number of piercings above and below her waist, which she got in a quest to “to jingle” while she walked. Of all her tattoos and piercings, Isobel claims the most painful body alteration was the tattooing of her toes.