YOU have to be held in some esteem to get your face on someone's leg.

Alexander Salmond, temporary First Minister of Scotia Minor, is held in high regard by many, but few even among these would go so far as to have his sonsie phizog engraved upon their lower limb forever.

Aphra Wilson, 33, of Spaghetti Tattoos, Kirkcaldy, is one such. She has inked a likeness of the First Eck on her right leg. That was a bold decision.

My own indecision about getting a tattoo of any sort is now in its fifth year. I couldn't go with any passing whim. Instead, I've tried to think of something meaningful that has featured for most of my adult life.

In the end, all I could come up with was varicose veins, and it seemed invidious, not to mention anatomically confusing, to have these tattooed on my leg.

As a tattoo artist herself, inking is Aphra's preferred way of expressing herself. Certainly, the likeness of the nation's leading Salmond is remarkably good, and a real testament to her skill.

Below the Eckling's coupon the words "Saor Alba" - freedom - are written across the first ministerial knuckles.

Although freedom was officially rejected by the Scottish people on September 18, it remains an inspiring, if imaginary, concept.

Whatever tattoo I go for in the end, I cannot think that Devo Max or, worse still, Federalism will be among the options. At the same time, I will not have anybody's face on my leg, nor on any other part of my pristine, peeled potato-pale anatomy.

It would be difficult to imagine anyone having top balloon Gordon Broon's scowling mug engraved upon their person. Unless the likeness had the word "mug" written under it.

Even supposing there were someone deserving of serious admiration - a footer player or pop singer perhaps - it's a big commitment to bung them forever on your epidermis.

Tattoos are a sign of the times. Today, the ratepayer's motto is: "It's my body and I will do with it what I will." In the past, such a philosophy was unthinkable and, indeed, explicitly banned in many rural areas.

As far as I am aware, no one in the 1950s ever got a tattoo of Sir Harold Macmillan. Although he'd be a reassuring presence with his moustache, and perchance his pipe, somehow he isn't a right fit for that sort of thing, even in aristocratic circles. You could roll up the sleeve of your dinner jack at a club luncheon and tell the assembled nobs: "Hoy, take a swatch at this, ya lemon-heedid loons." But your name thereafter would be Lord Mudd of Muddington.

You might get away with a discreet Sir Alec Douglas Home just above the ankle, but that's about it. Even then, is there not something disturbingly sensuous about a face on your leg? I am not convinced I could perform - so to speak - under such circumstances.

The Eck would be bad enough -as he is a living person with a smirk- but to have Sir Harold Macmillan's moustache twitching on your leg would surely dampen anyone's ardour.

It would be a valid and interesting university research project to discover how many children had been conceived under the wobbling tattooed eyes of Che Guevara or Nelson Mandela.

I recall now that a friend gave me some stick-on, temporary tattoos of characters from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films and that, for some time, I was proud to have Gandalf the wizard looking a little lost among the follicles on my forearm (not quite Fangorn Forest, admittedly).

But part of me remained uncomfortable at Gandalf's presence, which thankfully was not permanent, as I grew to detest Jackson's travesties of Tolkien's holy canon, most notably the car chases and lesbian orgy scenes in The Desolation of Smaug.

Aphra says her Eckish tattoo is designed to "keep the dream of hope over fear alive". An admirable sentiment, even if fear won the day.

Surely, there must be somebody somewhere with Alistair Darling's dark caterpillar eyebrows arched above their kneecap while beneath that bone, escutcheon-style, a scrolled motto proclaims: "Fear and Negativity". Who could live to regret such a thing?