Skin creeping over stick-on tattoo craze

SUPERSTAR Jackie Chan has come out against the new craze for stick-on tattoos - worried youngsters will flock to seedy parlours to have themselves decorated.

Singers Jacky Cheung Hok-yau and Aaron Kwok Fu-shing and actress Michelle Reis are among several stars who have been spotted sporting the stickers, that give you much of the cachet of the real thing without going through the pain and inconvenience of getting a real one.

Reports in Britain and the United States suggest the tattoos pass potentially-dangerous substances into the skin.

But Chan is more concerned by the health risks posed by unlicensed premises using dirty needles to tattoo customers.

He is also worried they will glamorise triad societies whose members often cover great tracts of skin with symbolic tattoos.

Already too many teenagers were sounding like apprentice dragon heads and red poles because of the triad slang they picked up from television dramas, he said.