BIG burly soldier Wayne Owers isn’t the kind of man you imagine to be ashamed of his warrior-type tattoos.

But after being led astray as a drunken teenager by his older brother to have two huge tattoos inked up each of his arms, he was hit with a wave of regret within months.

Wayne recalls eventually looking at them with such shame that eventually it stopped him from wearing short-sleeved T-shirts.

It was the birth of his baby daughter that finally pushed the then 37-year-old Wayne to get the “jailhouse tats” erased from his life and his body at a Birmingham clinic three years ago.

Wayne’s story isn’t so uncommon as a latest poll shows most people start to regret having a tattoo by the age of 35.

Almost a third of people in the UK now have at least one tattoo – but around 16 per cent say they wish they had never gone under the needle in the first place.

Five per cent of those with regrets say it was because a tattoo with an ex-lover’s name caused friction in a future relationships and nearly six per cent say a tattoo ruined their wedding day.

People’s perceptions appear to shift from ‘cool’ to ‘chavvy’ by the mid-30s and one in eight people think tattoos look worse the older someone gets, according to surveys by Sk:n clinic, the Edgbaston-based company where Wayne was treated.

Wayne, a Captain with Warwickshire-based Royal Logistic Corps, who is serving in Afghanistan, started having the tattoos removed in January 2008, a process that lasted 18 months and cost him £3,000 through 13 laser treatments.

“It was 50 times more painful having them taken off than getting them done, but something I had to do,” said dad-of-one Wayne, now aged 40, from Leamington.

“Getting the tattoos when I was 17 was down to a ridiculous older brother. One was a large colourful dagger with lovehearts at the top and ‘Death before Dishonour’ scrawled down my left arm, while the right arm had a skull with a red snake and flowers around it.

“Within months, I regretted them. When my wife Sukie fell pregnant with our daughter Poppy, I finally decided it was time to get rid of them. I wasn’t going to be the tattoo-ed bald dad at the school gates. I didn’t want those tattoos to be part of her life.

“I work in the Army and had been doing bomb disposal training and couldn’t have big scabs on both my arms while I was doing that, so I kept putting it off until finally I was ready.

“It was savage to go through the removal and the cusp of my pain threshold, but something you can cope with.

“Blue is a difficult colour to get rid of, so I can still see a hint of it, but you wouldn’t know what it was.”

Wayne, who joined the Army when he was 20 and has completed tours in Iraq, added: “My wife said she didn’t care, but it mattered to me.

“I didn’t like people seeing them and I never wore short-sleeved tops, especially in front of the family. This summer felt great to be putting a T-shirt on.

“I think people do regret some tattoos as they get older. I saw a female soldier with one saying Love Conquers All on the inside of her wrist and I said to her ‘You’ll regret that one day and I can tell you how to get rid of it when you do’. I’ve become quite an advocate for it.”