Feathers McGraw trend sweeping UK tattoo parlours

29 January, 2025

Feathers McGraw

Wallace & Gromit villain Feather McGraw has become a surprise new favourite among people getting tattoos in the UK, a report has revealed.

The character made a return in the Aardman Animation Christmas special Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, having been the antagonist of the 1993 adventure The Wrong Trousers. In this new story, the imprisoned McGraw uses an AI gnome to frame Wallace and get his revenge.

The comedy was recently nominated for Best Animated Feature at the forthcoming Academy Awards, and more than 21million people have watched the film on BBC channels and the iPlayer service. The first appearance for the pair in nearly 20 years was also available on Netflix internationally.

BBC News spoke to several tattoo artists across the country, with one in Liverpool saying that they did six tattoos of Feather McGraw in the past week. Student Gia O’Donohoe was particularly taken by a shot where the character holds a seal in the style of a James Bond villain. Her post of the tattoo has got over 200,000 views on X (formerly Twitter) and was retweeted by Aardman’s official account.

Another user commented “hell yeah he is” at the report, before sharing their own ink, while another described theirs as “probably the best tattoo I have or ever will do. I love this lil guy”.

Vengeance Most Fowl will be up against Pixar’s Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot in their Oscars category, as well as Latvian independent film Flow, who beat all three to win Best Animated Feature at the recent Golden Globes.

Elsewhere, the film’s directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham have said every Wallace And Gromit pun has to be checked by legal because people are so “litigious” now, remarking that “The laws of parody have changed in entertainment”.

The post Feathers McGraw trend sweeping UK tattoo parlours appeared first on NME.