A Deep Dive into ‘Just Tattoo of Us’, the Greatest Show on British Television

I want to live in a world that subscribes to Just Tattoo of Us principles. Example: there are only two states of being in the Just Tattoo of Us universe, "bad" and "not quite so bad". This is what happens where Stephen Bear, A Lightning Bolt of Electric Television Made Flesh, dips his head into any one of the pop-up tattoo parlours to look at what's going on and pass judgment from above. He looks at a thigh, slowly wobbling and red-raw with ink. He winces at bottoms, splayed over a table, being worked on at close quarters by a tattoo artist chewing a toothpick. "Oof," he winces, one arm on the door jamb, then takes a deep breath. A light head shake. "That's a bad one." Capital B, capital O. Bad One.

The thing is, every tattoo on Just Tattoo of Us is a Bad One. That is the literal point of the show. Nobody wants to watch a TV show where people get tattoos they like (see: every single tattoo show ever, where wailing guitars squeal in the background constantly while some biker dude gets a portrait of his wife on his chest) (Tattoo Fixers is the only exception, but that's because you watch it to see the bad tattoos people already have, and so by the time the reveal of their newly-repaired ink comes around five minutes towards the end, you have already seen the good bit [bad tattoo] and can bear to watch the bad bit [someone happy w/ their tattoo]) ( Tattoo Fixers would be the perfect show if it took people's holiday tattoos – a picture of a dick, for instance; a bad nickname written wonkily as if with a biro – and then promised them a tight, intricate mandala cover up, and then re-did the original tattoo, only bigger and more colourful), and Just Tattoo of Us understands that.

That's where the spirit of Bad One comes in – such a simple little way of explaining something so bad, inked into the flesh of someone for so long. They are surprised, when someone opts not to punish their friends or family with a Bad One. And there has never in the history of Just Tattoo of Us been a genuine Good One. There are only Bad Ones, and Not Quite So Bad Ones. That is an emotional range I can subscribe to. That's a philosophy I can get behind.

There is no good. There is only Not Bad.

Just Tattoo of Us (*1) is a show where pairs of people – friends, couples, dads and daughters – banter each other off by commissioning and applying a tattoo to the other person's body, forever. That is the fundamental basis of the show. Charlotte Crosby and Stephen Bear host. To the lay observer (you; me) this may seem incredibly misguided, and diametrically opposed to the very concept of bants – banter, as we have previously established, is a curiously fragile and ethereal cloud-like structure, one that lives and hovers in the air around the faces of those who have just banted it out of them; attempts to make banter crystalline and permanent are almost always doomed to fail; writing banter down or inking it on a buttock immediately invalidates it – and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that this is wrong. It is a terrible idea to get a tattoo on your leg of a joke because MTV told you to. It is an absolutely appalling idea to get a tattoo, for free, in exchange for awkwardly talking on a sofa with Charlotte Crosby.

The twist in the tale, of course, of the for-banter MTV-sponsored leg tattoo, is that the person being tattooed does not know what they are having tattooed on them, and so the whole show is leading up to the reveal, the prestige, the moment when our tattooee discovers what has been inked on them forever and ever and ever, because these are the moments that make the TV. I am very serious about this: the entirety of an average Just Tattoo of Us episode is spent building to exactly one moment where you actually get to see the tattoo, but the whole long dance in the lead up to that is this weird combination of reality TV tropes, clever camera angles and all these odd mechanisms in place to disguise the act. Forty-five minutes of mechanisms.

So: in the initial consultation, the tattoo artist will hold their head and go "this is the worst one I've ever done" (we tap once again into the philosophy of the Bad One: in the tao of Just Tattoo of Us, badness escalates, week-by-week; by the end of the series, at the current going rate, Bad Ones will see people getting full face tattoos of someone else's face, proper 16-hour session in the chair with a detached tattoo artist slowly chewing and saying "sorry I have to do this to you, mate"); they'll say "if you were my friend, I'd kill you", really cranking the suspense, really milking it. But then also not able to show the tattoo in any possible way to the camera, and so then they swivel a small clipboard with the unseen design on it, and the person who commissioned the piece will say either "brilliant" or "really brilliant", and, over their shoulder, always looming, keeping it light, keeping it entertaining, Stephen Bear or Charlotte Crosby will say "oh my god!" or "wow – they're gonna hate that". This goes on for a really, really long time.

Mechanism #2: the tattoo will be done behind a small curtain, so neither the audience (us) nor the participants (victims) can see what is happening. They have to wear "Fear Goggles", which are shutter shades spray-painted shades of violent yellows and orange, in keeping with the feeling of the show. The tattoo is swaddled under a bandage until they are allowed to look at it in front of a mirror with everyone assembled all around them. And then, at the reveal, the only true moment of excitement in the show—

The tension—

WILL BUILD—

Zoom on Charlotte. Zoom on Bear. Faces pulled into rictuses of shock.

Tension still building—

They are wobbling in their Fear Goggles. They want to see what has been wrought on their body, but they can't. They are only allowed to look at themselves when Charlotte from Geordie Shore tells them.

Their mate, boyfriend or dad quietly looks around, nervous—

And the tension is still building—

Drums rumbling in the background, Charlotte looks at Bear, Bear looks at Charlotte—

At some point it might even throw to a green screen shot of Charlotte or Bear, looking shocked, or saying "THIS IS GONNA BE A BAD ONE"—

"3," they say. "2."

Background music accelerates to high revs like an F1 engine—

Tension still building, still building—

"1!"

AND THEN IT GOES TO A COMMERCIAL BREAK AND I AM PULLING OPEN THE WINDOW AND YELLING

The reason Just Tattoo of Us is 50 minutes of foreplay, five seconds of cumming is because it is, truly, such a simple format. Six people get tattoos as a joke. That's it. Also, consider for a moment which of these is the more dull and draining human conversation: "Someone explaining the meaning behind their tattoo" or "someone recounting a dream they had". Exactly. So this show needs fluff around it, to make it work. We meet our couples:

— so we meet our couples, and they say how they know each other and for how long, why they are mates or why they are in love, lads quietly saying "no he's a good laugh, he's a good laugh, we get on" about their mates who, sat next to them, seem to be wearing around six or seven layers of streetwear, just impossible amounts of streetwear, hoodies both on top of and beneath a gilet, and couples knot their hands and everyone says: "I'm gonna stitch them up." And Stephen Bear pauses for a second and then says: "Really."

A note on Stephen Bear: Stephen Bear is electric television. Sometimes I sit and think about where reality TV stars come from: whether they emerge, fully formed, clots of cells that miraculously came to life from out of the same swamp; or that they are made, forged inside furnaces deep within the bowels of MTV, designed in a lab, cheekbones and tattoo sleeves applied to them precisely by a scientist with tweezers. Stephen Bear's fame rise goes like this: TOWIE background appearance (2010); Shipwrecked (2011); Ex on the Beach (2015, 2016); Celebrity Big Brother (winner: 2016); Celebs Go Dating (2017); Just Tattoo of Us (present). He has, with almost unerring regularity, appeared on and conquered a reality TV show once a year for half a decade, until now, finally, wriggling full-time into the spotlight himself.

Bear is an enigma, a one-off: he has a skull tattoo over one hand that he holds over his face for photo opportunities; he still, miraculously, subscribes to The Game's school of peacocking, painting his nails and wearing eye-liner and making direct sexual references and calling girls "babe" and then getting off with them, because despite his sexual science being a decade out of date, it works. His Instagram, if you'd care to look, is just tanned selfies occasionally intersected with minute-long sponsored videos where he stiffly does a charcoal facemask. And the man is television dynamite. Stephen Bear has white eyes and white teeth and leers backwards away from his own jaw like he's constantly four lines into a five line power hour. He side-eyes people and clucks his hands down the front of his tight jeans. When he takes people off for their first tattoo consultation, he is preternaturally tactile, linking arms and interlocking fingers, hands wedged in the jean pocket of whichever person is in front of him, the one he met minutes ago. He is an incredibly watchable man.

He and co-star Charlotte Crosby are (as of press time, May, 2017) in a relationship, and you can see why: they are both lightning bolts of pure joyful charisma, reality TV pedigree, eyebrows constantly popped halfway up their foreheads, unlimited pots of energy, deep even tans, gleaming teeth, faces tight like a drum with sponsor-subsidised botox and, crucially, have that ability to explain on-screen drama alone in a greenroom with a slightly more enthusiastic voice than the one it's just been told to you in seconds before:

[SCENE. INT. MTV JTOU STUDIO. FAUX GRAFFITI CRISS-CROSSES EVERY WALL. A SOLE FERN PLANT PROPS UP A SINGLE CORNER. TENT-LIKE TATTOO POP-UP STUDIOS CLUTTER THE BACKGROUND. THE WHOLE SET HITS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN DOWN-LOW-AND-DIRTY AND ZAYN MALIK'S INDOOR SKATE PARK. BEAR AND CHARLOTTE ARE SAT ON AN IMMACULATE WHITE SOFA WITH TWO LADS CALLED BEN.]

CHARLOTTE: And how long have youse twos been mates?

BEN: Probably about– probably about seven years?

[SCENE. INT. CHARLOTTE CROSBY IS HAVING SOMETHING BETWEEN AN ORGASM AND AN EXPLOSION IN AN AQUAMARINE BLUE TO-CAMERA ROOM.]

CHARLOTTE: THESE GUYS HAVE BEEN FRIENDS. FOR OVER SEVEN. YEARS! OHHH… I WOULDN'T WANNA BE THERE WHEN THIS GOES TATS UP!

[BACK ON THE SOFA]

BEAR: So are you scared of what he's going to do to you?

BEN: Yeah

[BEAR IS IN THAT BLUE PLACE NOW]

BEAR: THESE GUYS ARE GONNA BE TROUBLE. BEN IS FREAKING OUT ABOUT WHAT HIS TATTOO MIGHT BE. HEHE… I WOULDN'T WANNA BE IN HIS SHOES.

[THE SOFA AGAIN]

CHARLOTTE: Right shall wuz go and get a tattoo done?

BEN: Yeah

[CHARLOTTE, IN THE BLUE HELL, YELLING AND YELLING]

CHARLOTTE: THESE BOYS. ARE SO UP. FOR THIS. I'VE GOT A FEELING BEN IS REALLY GONNA STITCH HIM UP

… OPPA TATTOO STYLE!

&c., &c., &c.

What I suppose at once thrills and terrifies me about the existence of Stephen Bear (and, to a slightly lesser extent, Charlotte Crosby) is that they came to this plane of reality fully formed. They did not need whittling or polishing to get to this point; they were already in existence. The word "reality" has a different meaning in TV – "reality", in the real world in which you and I live, means real and concrete; in TV, it means "unpretentious people being hyperactively entertaining", and there is a key difference; but crucially, it isn't real – and that's often where reality TV wannabes flail and fall: in the pursuit of reality and the easy-win fame that comes with it, they aim for truth ("I'll just be my obnoxious self! Hope y'all ready for some truth bombs!") and end up missing the mark, because the point isn't to be yourself, it's to be entertaining.

I have been in a room with Charlotte Crosby before, and attention is magically drawn towards her like a magnet. Bear, you feel, must be similar, naturally anointed with this other-worldly level of charisma that just makes people want to be near him. There are Stephen Bears out there, right now, in the wild, flittering in the background of TOWIE, making up substitute appearances on other, lower reality shows, waiting for their one shot at fame. There are Charlotte Crosbies getting compellingly pissed in two-WKD-for-a-pound student club nights. These pre-famous people walk amongst us. You just have to know how to spot them.

It's not overtly discussed, but it is presumed that, on Just Tattoo of Us, participants nominate before the show the three places they would be not unhappy to be tattooed on – chest, thigh, arse, usually; nobody plumps for "neck" or "forearm", for some reason – and then, from those, the person designing their tattoo can choose. Then there is a moment where the tattoo artist goes, "Right, do you want to know where your tattoo is going?" and there is this moment of hollow suspense – they know where it is going, because it is always going in the same place, it is going on the thigh – and the tattooee says, "Oh my god," or, "No, tell me," and then the tattoo artist, holding a big thigh-sized stencil, says: "Thigh." And they say: "Oh, OK."

There are certain tropes and standards you must meet when televising tattoo culture or tattoo art in any possible way, many established by Tattoo Fixers but also coming from society as a whole, and I am pleased to tell you JTOU adheres to them strictly. Incidental rock-flavoured background music, for instance. Slow-motion 4K close-up shots of someone snarling and wiping some bloody ink off an arm. It really helps if someone says "gnarly". Minimum of one of the tattoo artists needs to be wearing a baseball cap. People, I find, get tattoos for one of two reasons: i. extremely meaningful, deep, emotional reasons, to honour a dead brother or mum, to mark a plate-shifting moment in ones life; ii. because it's very funny and they have thought as much for <10 seconds. This has never been illustrated better than in the following clip, courtesy of and w/ thanks to MTV:

In amongst this trash heap, hope: in amongst lads tattooing their names near each others' dicks, and portraits of people the other either fancies or hates, or exes' names, or old throwbacks to jokes shared years ago, or an arrow pointing to a dick with the words "SUCK HERE IF U WANT CHLAMYDIA" – in amongst all that, a moment of fragile hope: the words "WILL YOU MARRY ME", tattooed forever on a leg, and then a nervous man in a zip-thru bomber reluctantly getting on one knee and proposing, finishing with a final flourish: "Please." It's sort of beautiful, really. It's the closest we'll ever get to Not a Bad One. Two people who met seven weeks ago who are really, really, properly in love. It's nice, isn't it. It's nice, sometimes, when flowers grow out of dirt.

What tattoo did he get in return? The exact diametric opposite to his emotion: a trumpet with a fart coming out of it, because her nickname for him is "Fart Trumpet".

Fart Trumpet.

Fart.

Trumpet.

(A trumpet with a fart coming out of it.)

Fart Trumpet.

Tune into Just Tattoo of Us on Mondays at 10PM, on MTV.

@joelgolby

(*1) A word on puns: puns are the worst thing in the entire universe, and as such the pun in this title should preclude it automatically from ever entering the annals of The Greatest Show on British Television, but that, if anything, highlights how good this show is: that we can look past the pun at the clear beating heart within, and judge that alone on its merits. Yes, the title is a pun, but what else would you call the show? Tattoo Horror: MTV Style? Here Mate, Look At Your Leg: I Put a Joke On It? Tatty Tatty Bum Bum? Absurd.

(*2) I cannot tell if this is a sustained sexual reflex Charlotte Crosby has or just a one-off: for whatever reason there were three consecutive episodes where Bear and Charlotte were wearing the same outfits, which we can only gather means they filmed them all on the same day (which honestly sounds exhausting: three episodes, at three couples per episode, with all the interstitials and meeting and greeting and retakes that must take? And not to mention the artists, one of whom I'm pretty sure ended up doing three tattoos in one day? I mean, that is just brutal, man) but anyway, over the course of those three episodes Charlotte threatened/offered to nosh of three (three.) male contestants on the show, including having a nosh off tug-of-love over who she most wanted to nosh off out of model Conrad and his Australian mate Adam (Conrad, who got the worst tattoo, was ultimately most sincerely offered the nosh off, sort of in a soothing, medicinal way), and there are two points to this i. Charlotte Crosby truly is reality TV royalty, bow to her as your Queen and ii. I mean that is, statistically, a lot of threatened off-noshing, for one presumably 12-hour period.

More from this series:

The Chase

Four in a Bed

Come Dine With Me