IT must be bizarre coming face-to-face with yourself on someone’s left arm.

But that is exactly what Irish rockabilly singer Imelda May encountered when she met a Great Sankey man backstage at the Parr Hall.

Super fan John Taylor has a picture of the star’s face tattooed on his arm and asked her to sign it after she played in Warrington last Wednesday.

The 43-year-old has met Imelda around six times but she was still stunned when she saw John’s new tattoo.

John waited outside the Parr Hall for an hour after gig until he was spotted by Imelda’s drummer, Steve Rushton.

He was invited backstage where the singer agreed to sign John’s copy of her album Mayhem and her first CD, No Turning Back, before he pulled up his sleeve.

“At that point she punched me and said what had I done that for,” said John, an IT service manager.

“But after that she said she was made up and thought it was fantastic.”

Imelda signed his arm which he had permanently inked at Saz Tattoo Studio in Padgate the day after.

John, who also replaced his mohican with an Imelda-style quiff three years ago, added: “My wife Anna took a lot of convincing before I got the tattoo as obviously it’s another woman.

“And Imelda tried to bully me into finding a space on my arm for her.”

But it is all part of John’s love affair with tattoos which started when he got his team Middlesbrough FC tattooed on his shoulder in 1999.

A decade later he got a tattoo to mark the moment when his children Robert, aged 15, and Megan, aged 12, bought him a Gretsch guitar for his 40th birthday John’s tattoo of Imelda is now fighting for space alongside Elvis.

He said: “Elvis was the first musician I got into through my dad Robert so it’s a big part of my history.

“But I fell out of love with music after that as I thought it was quite dull. Once I heard Imelda on Jools Holland’s show it reignited my passion for music.

“She was influenced by a lot of blues, rock and roll and rockabilly but has combined them to come up with her own sound.

“They say don’t meet your idols as you sometimes build them up into something they’re not but she’s really down to earth.”

Imelda in action, pictures, Dave Gillespie.

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