X-Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos and boyfriend, Danny Simpson recently underscored their love with a trip to the local tattoo studio. Closer to home, Deirdre Cashion talks to tattoo fans about their passionate love of body art.

Tattoos are no longer the preserve of the celebrity footballer, pervasive pop princess, criminal overlord or street junkie. People of all ages and from all walks of life are decorating their bodies, inspired by fashionable trends or by their own artistic creativity and life experience.

AN EMPTY chair at this Sunday’s Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration will serve as a painful reminder that the community has lost one of its most passionate and colourful commentators on the horrors of genocide. Holocaust survivor Zoltan Zinn-Collis, who passed away last December, aged 72, at his home in Athy, Co Kildare, will be sadly missed by those who gather to remember the victims of Nazi atrocities.

When Richard ‘Bruno’ Hauptmann was condemned to the electric chair for the 1932 abduction and murder of the Lindbergh baby, law enforcement agencies knew that he didn’t act alone. In a revealing new book, released on the 80th anniversary of the kidnapping, German emigrant, John Knoll is unmasked as the real mastermind behind the “Crime of the Century”.

Thousands of angry protestors recently demanded the immediate closure of America’s largest canvas prison compound in Maricopa County, Arizona. But can the Irish penal system learn a thing or two from Sheriff Joe Arpaio?

The mercury rises to an unbearable 53 degrees Celsius. The searing, mid-day, desert sun beams down on the canvas roof of the tent compound – the only protection, which 2,000 men and women have from the relentless, blistering heat.

It’s 9am in sunny Los Angeles. John O’Shea is off to bed for some well-deserved rest after 12 hours straight at the poker table. But the 27-year-old Dubliner sounds decidedly downbeat. He’s had a bad run on the green baize over four or five days and has lost $150,000 (€112,000) — about 25pc of his bankroll, or float.

For most ordinary punters, this would be unimaginable. But for O’Shea, it’s just another day at the office. That week’s loss isn’t exactly small change — even by O’Shea’s high standards — but with estimated career profits of $2m (€1.5m), there’s plenty more left in the kitty.