I thought he’d be a bit snickery because I suppose a person like me – a nurse, and so on – wasn’t his normal clientele, but he was fine. I told him, ‘It’s not a tattoo I’m interested in, I’m interested in the tongue forking.’

He said, ‘Oh, well, you’re going to have to come back for that.’

And I said, ‘No, it isn’t for me. I don’t want it done. I’m interested in how you do it.’

He said, ‘Well, I’m in the middle of something here.’ But his client – there was a man face down on the chair getting tattooed – said, ‘I’m happy to take a break.’ So the tattooist put his gun down and went over to the cabinet where he kept all his wands for navel piercings and the eyebrow studs, and he said, ‘You can basically use any of these for the tongue.’

I said, ‘It’s not the jewellery I’m interested in. I’m interested to know how you do it. I saw the article where you said it’s easy. Do you have a special tool, and what do you do about the blood?’

The tattooist said, ‘There isn’t much blood, not the way we do it.’ He ran through the method with me: he was basically taking his own tongue by the tip, and he grabbed that band of flesh that sits under there – the bit that holds the tongue to the floor of your mouth – and he said, ‘That flap there, that’s about the halfway mark of the tongue.’

Well, I could see that. We all can. Grab your tongue and feel for yourself – the bit where the band of skin holds it down, that’s about the middle of your tongue.

The tattooist said, ‘We drive a piercing gun through the tongue at that point. Then, once you’ve got the hole in, we take a piece of fishing line and thread it over the tongue, and we thread it vertical so it’s right down the middle of the tongue. And we tie the fishing line at the tip – tight as you can.’

He was holding his own tongue as he said this. ‘Then what you do is basically pull the line a bit tighter every day, so it’s cutting a vertical line into the tongue. You pull it and pull it, and after six weeks or so, the tongue just splits, and there’s no blood.’

The bloke on the leather chair had been watching and listening, and he said, ‘I saw somewhere that when you’ve got a forked tongue, each half can do its own thing.’ The tattoo guy said, ‘It takes some practice,’ and he shot his own tongue out again, and it was forked. He could make each of the two sides jerk about, or he could hold them together, whatever he liked, and it was foul in my opinion but I had the information I needed, so I said, ‘Thank you.’

And here’s something funny, Jack. The tattooist said, ‘Is it for you or are you thinking for your girlfriend?’