Student's Winehouse tattoo protest (From Bucks Free Press)

Student's Winehouse tattoo protest

10:33am Thursday 6th March 2008

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A STUDENT has made a striking protest against the alleged drug use of singer Amy Winehouse - in a tattoo covering the top half of one leg.

Matt Pearce, 19, has had a tattoo of the star with a pair of scissors up her nose - mirroring a famous 1970s anti-drug advertisement.

Photography student Matt of Queens Road, Princes Risborough, said: "People like Amy Winehouse are given all the chances in the world to make something of themselves and they just throw it away.

"When they do bad things they just get more attention. People almost idolise her and there are people out there who are stupid enough to go out there and copy her."

He said he took inspiration from a 1970s poster spotted in an art book of a similar picture with the warning "Noses weren't made for cocaine either".

His tattoo states No...no...noses weren't meant for cocaine either" - a play on the words of Winehouse's hit song Rehab.

The bestseller contains the line They tried to make me go to rehab I said no, no, no".

It also plays another of the singer's hits Black to Black, with the tattoo being captioned "Back to Crack" - a reference to a video allegedly showing the star using the danger drug.

The tattoo - which took two three-hour sessions - is his latest symbolic reminder of the dangers of life's vices.

Matt also has three faces on his arm representing vanity, obsession and possession.

An unfinished portrait of the Virgin Mary on his chest is among his other tattoos.

Matt, who attends Amersham and Wycombe College, said: "If you look at the positives and negatives of drugs nothing good ever comes of them - they just attract bad things.

"I was trying to put the message out there that if you're given a chance in life you have to make the most of it and not throw it away on drugs."

The tattoo would have cost £400 - but Matt got it for free from friend Sean Wood, Woody's Tattoo Studio in Octagon Parade, High Wycombe.

Matt - who got his first tattoo aged 17 when he was in Budapest - said his latest addition was already getting people's attention.

He said: "A lot of people have come up to me in the pub and said Are you the guy with the Amy Winehouse tattoo?'"

"And did it hurt?

"Put it this way, the more tattoos you get, it doesn't hurt any less."

The star entered a rehabilitation clinic in January.

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