In my imaginary appearance on Dragons' Den, I'm extolling the virtues of my new invention: a machine that instantly and painlessly removes tattoos. All the Dragons are in.
Last week's revelation that a line of Hebrew text (meaning "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine"), which runs from the nape of Victoria Beckham's neck down her spine, has been gently fading away led to questions over the state of her marriage. I think it's far more likely that it's the tattoo, not David, that has fallen out of favour.
And I know how Mrs Beckham feels. Back in 1997, I had been living in Hong Kong for almost five years, working as a television news correspondent and presenter. It was coming up to the handover, the return of Hong Kong to China, and also the end of my stint in the region. In an area called Wanchai there is a famous old tattoo parlour that has been inking sailors for generations, where I decided to get a Chinese character tattooed on my hip. It meant "brave and strong", a similar meaning to my name.
I was in my twenties, and I thought it was the perfect symbol of my time in Asia; its permanence would be a reminder to me not to become too conservative or stuffy as I aged. I also had it, of course, because I thought it looked good; great, even. It sat between low-waisted jeans and a cropped top in the late Nineties, saying that, despite the serious nature of my job, I was slightly rebellious, bohemian, free-spirited.
In the intervening 17 years I may not have changed in the ways my twentysomething self worried I would, but tattoos have exploded in a way that I certainly didn't predict. There are 1,500 tattoo parlours in Britain - twice the number there were 10 years ago. From Aberdeen to Abergavenny, they are inking everything from hieroglyphics to hummingbirds on arms and ankles, backs and buttocks, with the same regularity that we once received our BCGs.
Now 20 million people in Britain have a tattoo, it feels about as free-spirited as having a Tesco Clubcard. Back in my twenties, getting "inked" was the kind of thing that still shocked your parents. Now, twentysomethings' parents are more likely to be getting their own. Almost a quarter of 40- to 59-year-olds have one somewhere on their body, compared with one in six of those aged between 18 and 24. This summer, a survey found that today's novelty-seeking pensioners aren't just taking up backpacking and joining Facebook, some 5 per cent of the over-sixties are getting their first tattoo, too.
Now I'm in my mid-forties, I don't deeply regret my tattoo; I liked it for the first decade. But in the past few years I've felt, if not embarrassed as such, then a growing sense that I'd prefer it wasn't there. On the beach this summer, surrounded by Celtic swirls, Sanskrit and Oriental calligraphy, I felt like distinguishing my own with a little label noting its interesting provenance and date - like a rare cheese at a farmer's market that just happens to look like cheddar.
Or I could just get it removed. I don't wear the same watch, have the same hairstyle or own a single item of clothing that I had in the Nineties, so why was I hanging on to this?
A generation ago, removing a tattoo was prohibitively painful. It involved dermabrasion, acid peels or literally cutting the image out and replacing it with skin grafts. More recently, celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Beyonce have used lasers to erase tattoos that signified past relationships.
VB's decision to de-ink may be merely a fashion choice but, as ever, she's on-trend. Recent statistics from the British Association of Dermatologists (BAD) suggest a third of people with tattoos regret them. And although getting them removed is an expensive, painful and lengthy process, costing between pounds 50 and pounds 300 a pop for up to 20 carefully timed sessions, the removal business is booming. It grew 440 per cent in a decade in the US, according to the research firm Ibis.
UK statistics are harder to come by, but new methods for tattoo removal, as much as celebrity endorsement, could really drive the trend. A laser called PicoSure is the latest offering. It uses thermal energy in ultra-short pulses to break up the ink particles, which are then absorbed by the lymphatic system. This is supposed to mean fewer sessions and better results.
However, even with PicoSure, the consultant told me that mine could take between four and eight blasts - even though it's small, and black, the easiest colour to erase. That puts the cost anywhere between pounds 500 and pounds 1,000 - far more than it cost to brand myself in the first place. Although an anaesthetic cream will alleviate some of the discomfort, it would still be painful. Worst of all, there's no guarantee that it won't leave a scar.
In search of an alternative, I've had one trial session of advanced laser tattoo removal, which was quick and uncomfortable, rather than painful - but as it didn't make any noticeable difference to the pigment, I think I'm going to have to suffer for my body art if I want to be ink-free on the beach next summer.
In the meantime, if anyone out there comes up with that instant tattoo removal machine, don't trouble yourself with those pesky Dragons - I'll invest myself, in the surefire knowledge it could make us both richer than the Beckhams.