Making her mark

A man has his thigh tattooed by tattoo artist Nikole Lowe. Photo / Getty Images

Having coffee with Nikole Lowe involves running the gauntlet of stares and whispers. "Isn't that the girl off the telly?" asks the barista in an East London cafe.

Later, as we make our way to Lowe's gloriously overdone studio, a couple of parking wardens point and wave. Learning to deal with public attention is something the former Aucklander is getting a little better at.

Two years ago Lowe was shunted from obscurity into the celebrity queue after appearing on London Ink, a reality television show set in a tattoo studio, shown in New Zealand on the Discovery Channel.

In less than a decade, she's become one of Britain's most sought-after tattoo artists, with clients waiting for up to two years to have their bodies decorated by her. When the producers of London Ink, a spin-off of the popular Los Angeles and Miami programmes, sought an artist with an additional X chromosome to act as a foil to the three male stars, they relentlessly pursued Lowe.

"To be honest, I wasn't terribly keen," she admits. "I hadn't really paid much attention to the American shows and didn't fancy having my life exposed in that way." But then Louis Molloy - famous for tattooing the crucifix on footballer David Beckham's back - came calling, and Lowe began to take the offer seriously.

"Louis is a bit of a legend in the business, and you don't ignore his phone calls. I'd previously worked with Phil, one of the guys who'd been approached, so we went out for dinner, drank a bit too much and basically dared each other to do it."

The first series, in 2007, was shot over six weeks at a North London tattoo studio. Lowe's star was immediately in the ascendant. "When it first aired, it was weird to see pictures of myself on billboards around town and to have people do a double-take when they saw me on the Tube. But I was more concerned about how I came across: it's so awkward to watch yourself on TV. I would cringe and go, 'oh my God, did I just say that? What an idiot!'

By the second series, Lowe had earned a sizeable following for her stylised Japanese designs, which sit at the more feminine end of the spectrum and feature delicate petals and tendrils, blood-red peonies and golden koi carp. "I became known as the koi carp girl. They all end up looking the same and I can't tell you how sick I am of doing them." Fortunately, Lowe doesn't have to any more.

Six months ago, she opened her own studio, Good Times Tattoo, in the hip suburb of Shoreditch. The name was inspired by her love of a good knees-up. But wasn't it a brave - not to mention foolhardy - move to launch a business during one of the worst recessions in recent memory? Apparently not. "The economic situation actually worked in my favour, because I wouldn't have been able to get this place if they hadn't dropped the rent."