Woman becomes first person to get a tattoo of former EastEnders

This is Emma and she is almost definitely the only person on this planet to have a tattoo of Lucy Benjamin’s face on her calf.For most of us, Lucy Benjamin is just the woman who played Phil Mitchell’s lady friend in EastEnders for a while. She appeared in the gossip mags for a bit afterwards because she did a salsa DVD and the celebrity jungle programme, but that was about it.But for Emma Smith, Lucy Benjamin is so much more; she’s an inspiration. And also a tattoo.In 2003 the actress was starring as the princess in the Aladdin pantomime at Southampton’s Mayfair Theatre.Emma went along to see the show and as they say, ‘the rest is history.’‘I didn’t know what to expect from Lucy Benjamin on stage because I’ve only ever seen her in EastEnders and I didn’t know how she was going to be,’ Emma said of the experience.‘I noticed she was really good in it.’So inspired by Benjamin’s performance was a then-teenage Emma that she waited for her outside the stage door after the show.‘We waited outside the stage door – she was really friendly and happy enough,’ Emma told viewers of tonight’s Bodyshockers programme.‘She signed an autograph for me… The next day I got the autograph tattooed, so yeah, that was extreme,’ she revealed.‘When it [Aladdin] did come to an end, I was gutted.‘I needed something to pick me up and that was having another tattoo of Lucy Benjamin. Her whole body on my leg.’‘I started to dislike it pretty quickly,’ she admits. ‘As time went on, maybe after a year, I decided that it was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.’Emma is now having laser surgery to remove the tattoo, confessing that the Lucy Benjamin tattoo naysayers were right.‘I wish I’d listened to people who warned me not to do things and said “you’ll regret it some day”. I said I wouldn’t but I’m sitting here now saying I do.’(metro.co.uk)ANN.Az