A TATTOOED fan with 24 celebrity portraits on his body will try to get one signed tomorrow – when rock star Alice Cooper visits Nottingham.

Steve Porter has travelled around the world to gigs and signing sessions to get 11 of the tattoos autographed.

The 41-year-old, of Strelley, asks them to write their name in pen next to their picture and then goes to a tattoo parlour to make it permanent.

Alice Cooper, whose hits include Poison and School's Out, is performing at the Concert Hall tomorrow. Steve thought it would be an ideal opportunity to try to get a 12th tattoo signed.

He said he couldn't afford a ticket for the show because he spends most of his money travelling to Norway to see his girlfriend, Kristen Erstad.

But he plans to leave a photo of his Alice Cooper tattoo at the stage door and hope he gets a call.

"The tattoos are all things I have been really big into over the years and still am now," said Steve, who works as a civil servant.

"They are a history of my life and where I was at that stage."

The tattoos are an eclectic mix of musicians and actors, from Ozzy Osbourne and members of Iron Maiden to Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar and actress Doris Day.

Steve said he "got the bug" for getting them signed when Andrea Corr, of Irish folk band The Corrs, agreed to sign the picture of her on his back when the band performed at the Concert Hall in December 1998.

"It came about by chance because I bumped into the head of security in the loo – he was really into tattoos and arranged it for me," he said.

"It gave me the bug to get the others signed. I think it's like gambling – if you have a big win when you start, you get hooked."

Steve got Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne's signature after he e-mailed the singer's management and spent £1,200 travelling to Los Angeles to meet him in the Beverley Hills Hotel in 2001.

He got autographs from the Iron Maiden line-up backstage at the Birmingham NEC in 2000, because his tattoo artist Marc Fairburn, of Danny's tattoo parlour in Sneinton, knew the band's founder member and bassist Steve Harris.

But he said he was unlikely to get all of his tattoos signed.

Buffy actor Anthony Head refused a request to sign a picture on Steve's back when Steve went to see him at a signing in Middlesbrough.

Steve admitted the Doris Day tattoo would be the most challenging.

"Obviously, these people are busy and like a private life and their personal space," he said. "But I would like to get this signed by Alice Cooper while he's here in Nottingham. It is like getting validation for the tattoo. It is like them saying, 'I appreciate it', I suppose."

jon.robinson@nottinghameveningpost.co.uk