Man gets Tesco Clubcard tattooed on his arm as he kept forgetting it

Dad-of-three Dean Mayhew, 31, got the QR code for his card tattooed on his wrist - and it works perfectly under the scanner at the till.

Since getting the tat in July last year he says he has used it twice daily - and has sent photos of it to friends so they can use it too.

Dean says he has "no regrets" about getting the ink - especially with food prices soaring.

Dean, a scaffolder from Bideford, north Devon, said: “People just say that it’s typical me – sometimes I’m not the cleverest of guys but they’ve said that for me, it’s pretty genius.

He added: “I’ve been thinking of getting [the tattoo] for the last three to four months. Every time I go in there they ask if I’ve got my Clubcard but it’s always at home or I’ve lost it."

Dean Mayhew, from Horsham, got a Tesco Clubcard tattooed on his arm after he kept forgetting it

Dean spent half an hour getting the tattoo at A Star Tattoo in Surrey last year, before popping to a Tesco Express to find out if it worked.

“I tried the self-checkout, but it was quite awkward to use because I wasn’t doing it right, so I said, 'let me go to the guy on the till'. I went up there and it worked,” Dean said. “He couldn’t believe it.

"Every time I go in there they’re shocked and it’s good to see people’s faces. I could use the one on my phone, but I want to use the one on my arm as it’s funny.

“Anything you can do with a normal Clubcard I can do with my arm. The tattoo is still in the healing process at the moment and still scabby.

"I don’t know if it will still work when it’s healed but I don’t see why it wouldn’t. I don’t regret stuff - I’m not one of those people.

"I don’t think it looks bad - I think it looks pretty cool.”

Dean Mayhew's tattoo artist Dan Rossetter

Dean’s tattoo artist Dan Rossetter said he’d never had a customer ask for a Tesco Clubcard throughout his 12 year career to date.

 “At first I said, ‘are you sure you want to do this’. But I saw the fun within it and thought, ‘let's do it’,” he said.

“I was anxious about how well it was likely to work as it's an intricate bar code but Dean was quite relaxed about it and was going for the fun aspect – he said if it didn’t work it wasn’t the end of the world.

“I did the tattoo and we went to the till and a person with a scanner tried and on the first go it worked. Dean’s face lit up and I realised it actually did work.

“I think I’m always quite a fun outgoing type of guy anyway so it was a bit of banter and there is the element of it being a genius idea – it's not something I would have come up with off the top of my head, to be honest I thought it was quite cool.”

Dean also admitted he has considered getting a Nectar card for when he shops at Sainsbury's - because he often forgets that too.

“I did think about getting another one but that’s a whole other thing," he said. “I quite often go between Sainsburys and Tesco’s.”