Forget Freddy Kruger’s rusty talons or Darth Vader’s dark aura - few cinematic villains have captured the true essence of evil quite like a bowling-pin shaped penguin wearing a red rubber glove to disguise himself as a chicken.
His name is Feathers McGraw, and he's still wanted by the authorities - and by everyone else as a tattoo.
The arch-nemesis of Aardman Animations’ beloved Wallace and Gromit franchise, the mischief-making penguin first appeared as a deceptive lodger out to commit a jewellery heist in the 1993 Oscar-winning short-film The Wrong Trousers.
Interest in the character spiked again following the Christmas premiere of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, in which Feathers returns for revenge, corrupting Gromit’s AI gnome in pursuit of the Blue Diamond. The film was watched by 21.6 million people in the UK, breaking all previous Christmas Day TV records for the past 20 years. It’s also been nominated for numerous awards, including Best Animated Feature at the upcoming Academy Awards.
Outside of critical acclaim, fans are honouring their favourite character by getting Feathers permanently inked on their bodies. According to British tattoo artists, there’s been a notable rise in people requesting the fraudulent chicken.
“In this last week just gone I did six Feathers,” Faith Garvie, a tattoo artist at Black Moon Tattoo Studio in Liverpool, said in an interview with PA news agency.
From the classic 'Wanted' poster to black and grey stick n' poke tattoos of Feathers sinisterly stroking a seal, the simplicity of the characters’ design allows for peoples’ imaginations to run wild.
“I guess it’s just the magic of claymation, as he’s so emotive, but he doesn’t speak at all,” Garvie said, also adding that there are two particular Feathers-featuring scenes that most of her customers are drawn to: “One of them is from Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers – it’s where Feathers gets stuck in a glass bottle.
“Everyone seems to adore that and some people get it with the glove on his head and others without.
"There's also a scene - again, where he's in The Wrong Trousers, where he's standing at the bottom of the stairs in Wallace and Gromit's house and he looks over at them, and people get that scene a lot as well."
The aforementioned tattoo of Feathers as a Blofeld-style villain, his persian cat replaced with a seal, was the idea of 20-year-old student Gia O'Donohoe.
“When I saw the scene with him and the seal, it was a lightbulb moment and I knew it was going to be that one,” she explained.
After having it done at the Brass Tattoo Company in Liverpool, O'Donohoe uploaded a picture to X and tagged the official Aardman Animations account, who then liked and reposted it.
“It was kind of crazy, I just decided to tag them and they were one of the first people who liked it, and then they reposted it and then it got 3,000 likes overnight,” O’Donohoe said.
While pop culture has always been a bountiful sources of inspiration for impassioned fans getting inked, people are perhaps now more trepidatious about what or who they honour - lest our tastes change, or we find out some horrific behind the scenes development. It's why you can't go wrong with Feathers McGraw, really - a timeless and treasured icon that we already know, without a doubt, to be the absolute worst.
Come to think of it, what if all these tattoos are part of Feathers' next big master plan? Secretly stealing and tweaking an invention by Wallace that infuses tattoo ink with a brain-controlling fungus and has us all doing his evil bidding?
Just a small concern.
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