Becky Holt greets me at the door of her Cheshire home dressed in a fluffy robe, and with heated rollers still in her hair. She apologises for not being ready and we head up to her bedroom to chat, while she puts her make up on.

She also apologises for her ‘hairy legs’ but, to be honest, there’s not a single hair visible.

For Becky Holt is covered in tattoos. From head to toe — literally, including her armpits. She’s a wild kaleidoscope of colours with every pattern, image and symbol imaginable.

It started with a teenage folly – getting a boyfriend’s name tattooed on her lower abdomen. Now, 21 years on – after spending £30,000 and 400 hours under the needle – Becky’s earned herself the moniker ‘Britain’s Most Tattooed Mum’, with 95 percent of her body covered in ink.

Becky Holt, the UK’s ‘most tattooed woman’, smiles alongside her daughter Aurora

She’s had everything done – and I mean everything!

‘It’s an opening flower down there,’ she says, pointing to her nether regions. ‘You can have a look if you like!’ I politely decline…

The 36-year-old mum – who has pursued careers as an alternative model, ‘creator’ on the OnlyFans website and is now a support worker – made headlines earlier this month after meeting Rishi Sunak on ITV’s This Morning, the day before he lost the General Election.

Poor Rishi was sitting awkwardly in the studio wings, a smile fixed on his face as hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard interviewed Becky, who proudly showed off her body art in an itsy bitsy white bikini.

‘I couldn’t believe I met the prime minister!’ she tells me. ‘Not because I like him particularly, I don’t know anything about politics, I don’t even vote.’

She may not have voted, but she did like Rishi, who later asked her about her tattoos.

‘He was really polite, and he had gorgeous teeth and beautiful skin. It was flawless!’ she smiles.

Naturally, strait-laced Rishi doesn’t have any tattoos, and when pressed on what he’d get if he did, he eventually stammered, ‘Southampton FC’, his football club.

You either love or hate tattoos and it’s safe to say Becky is obsessed with them. She longed to be like the models in Bizarre, an alternative culture magazine, wearing latex and covered in tattoos. Her dream came true when she became their cover girl in 2014.

In her early 20s, Becky had dark hair – a stark difference to her current look, with long platinum blonde locks

In her early 20s, Becky had dark hair – a stark difference to her current look, with long platinum blonde locks. Coupled with some plastic surgery, including rhinoplasty to reshape her nose and a boob job, she is unrecognisable now.

‘I’ve changed a lot as a person. When I look back at old pictures, I see quite a lost young girl who was quite troubled. I’m much happier now.’

She got her first tattoo when she was 15 and underage.

‘I got a tattoo of my ex-boyfriend’s name… down there,’ she says. ‘It’s not there any more!’

When her police officer dad found out he paid for it to be covered up … with another tattoo. Becky chose a design of a skull with flowers growing out of its mouth.

The tattooing continued from then on. For her 18th birthday, she got a flower on her lower back. Later, an anchor on her right foot with the words, ‘Never judge someone until you walk a mile in their shoes’.

Many of the tattoos have meanings, such as scenes from her favourite film, Labyrinth – starring David Bowie – on her left leg, a rose dedicated to her grandmother on her upper right thigh, and names of her parents and daughter. On her left arm is a glass bottle representing her sister’s favourite movie, Death Becomes Her, starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. She has one saying ’99 per cent’ that is dedicated to her current boyfriend Ben, on her ankle.

Becky even ran her own tattoo shop, bought by her then boyfriend, between 2014 and 2018.

Her ‘most emotional’ tattoo is the David Bowie lyric, ‘We can be heroes’, penned underneath her hairline.

‘David Bowie’s got me out of some dark places,’ she says. ‘I think he’s done a lot for people who felt lost with their identity.’

And then came her infamous, most private tattoo, which wasn’t private at all.

‘Everything else had been done, it was just another gap on my body that I needed to fill.’

The 36-year-old made headlines earlier this month after meeting Rishi Sunak on ITV’s This Morning, the day before he lost the General Election

Becky said the former prime minister asked her about her tattoos and was ‘very polite’ 

The painful process of tattooing her vagina was filmed and shared on social media. In the video Becky is clearly flinching; I wince just watching it.

While she found it ’embarrassing’, the clip got 25million views.

So how did it feel?

‘It was horrific, it’s like ripping, burning, not nice at all. But it healed in about three days.’

Nonetheless, some areas are off limits. She wouldn’t get her eyeballs tattooed. Yep. You can get them done. She tells me about a woman in Australia who went blind for three weeks after getting ink injected into the whites of her eyes.

And contrary to common misconception, you actually CAN get the soles of your feet tattooed. But it’s not cost effective as the ink fades quickly due to the wear and tear.

These days, Becks is at ease living a domesticated life with her child Aurora and a cat (a two-year-old maine coone called Ziggy). But her past has been as colourful as her body art, and she admits she sought validation from a succession of unsuitable men.

When she was 15, she dated an older man – a Pakistani Muslim.

‘He actually proposed to me. I even converted to Islam for him. I’d wear the salwar kameez [Pakistani dress], I used to go to the mosque. But when we broke up, I stopped going. I only did it for him, I didn’t really believe in Allah. I was just so obsessed with this guy.’

She was expelled from school, leaving without any qualifications. She went straight into work, holding down five jobs at a time to sustain her drug addiction.

‘I was just a nightmare. My parents tried to keep me safe but I didn’t listen. Who does at that age?’

She lived in the US with her on-off boyfriend from 2018-2020, but their relationship ended when, one evening, in 2019, he crashed their car. Becky was lucky to get away with just a few broken bones.

She left him and travelled to Bali in March 2020, picking the island because of its strict anti-drug laws. At that point she was hooked on cocaine and diazepam, and she thought the Indonesian island would be a good opportunity to detox. Instead, she got pregnant by a local man.

‘I didn’t even want kids but after a while I accepted it. I actually coped very well.’

After five months, she moved back to Poynton, in Cheshire. Her parents – mum Gilly, 61, and dad Tony, 64 – live nearby, as do her two brothers and one sister.

Aurora Forrest was born in December 2020, delivered by C-section after an agonising 72 hours in labour.

Now a lively three-year-old, Aurora (or Rory) is a confident and chatty child. ‘I made a silly mistake [in Bali] but what came out of it was really beautiful,’ says Becky.

Motherhood was easy compared to finding work. Becky was rejected by many employers because of her tattoos. That’s why she ended up creating an account on the adult site Only Fans. ‘The money was great but it affected my mental health,’ she admits. ‘Being a mum and doing sex work, it’s not a great look.’

Eventually, an old school friend offered her a job. She’s now a support worker for adults with learning disabilities, helping them with their daily activities.

‘I love the warmth I get from the clients. It’s nice knowing I’m making a difference to their lives.’

Becky met her partner Ben Mason, 25, who ink free and scared of needles, at a pub in 2021

She also works part-time in a local pub, the Bull’s Head, and runs a fashion brand called Off Your Box, which makes sustainable clothing.

And her love life is more stable now.

She met Ben Mason, now 25, at the pub in 2021. An arborist, he is her complete opposite. For one thing he’s an introvert. The other is that he’s completely ink free, as he’s scared of needles.

‘We get odd looks all the time, but he’s not worried about my tattoos. He knows they don’t define me.’

But some people can’t get past Becky’s heavily pigmented skin. She gets trolled online and has been refused service in the US and in Turkey, as restaurant staff think her face tattoos are gang related.

What’s more, tattoos are notorious for not ageing well, as skin wrinkles and the colours blur and fade.

So Becky simply replaces one tattoo with another to keep them looking fresh. She redid a rose tattoo on her thigh last month. But going over tattoos is more painful, as you’re needling over old scar tissue.

She’s redoing her feet next month, as well as her palms (despite this being the most painful process).

And what if little Rory wants a tattoo?

‘She’s got transfers (temporary tattoos) herself,’ says Becky. ‘She can get one when she’s older as long as she goes to a good artist of my choice. Oh. And definitely NO boyfriend’s names!’