The world’s first multicoloured tanning studio is set to fling its doors open this weekend.
Clients can bring along a picture with the colour they want and the Tammie Tan’s Tan Mixing Machine™ will recreate it on the spot and carry out a full body spray in 3 minutes flat.
When I ask about the thinking behind her opening a multi-colour tanning shop Tammie, who had recently sprayed herself purple, becomes quite animated.
“I was chatting with a friend about child hood crushes. Mine was Keith Chegwin. So we searched on YouTube and watched an old clip of him having the craic with Noel Edmunds on The Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. That evening I went to B&Q for some paint for my hall and was looking for a specific colour. A very helpful staff member took me to their mixing machine and after taking a scan of the colour I wanted from my phone it started to mix the colour. It was then I had a Eureka moment! The stars aligned! I’ve owned this tanning shop for several years now and have been trying to come up with ways to innovate and this was it. I knew it! So here we are.”
“This…Is…Groundbreaking! We are setting a world trend here. This will very quickly be all the rage. Kevin Costner once said ‘Build it and they will come’. We had the cajones to build it and the people will come. You wait and see!”
“It was a character being played by Kevin Costner who said that actually. His character was hearing voices whilst standing in a corn field” I reminded Tammie.
“Yeah well whatever, they still came though, right!”
“They sure did. They sure did. Wouldn’t have been much of a movie if they hadn’t, right!?”
Tammie’s eyes opened wide in surprise at my comment. The contrast of the whites of her eyes against her freshly painted purple skin gave me a little fright.
“Whatever! Let the haters hate. You wait and see. My surname is Tan, which is crazy right!? This was all in the stars from day one. Did you know that Tan means dawn in Turkish? No. Well, this is a new dawn. A new dawn in the tanning world!”
I ask Tammie to slow down a little as I’m having difficulty understanding her. She has clearly drank way too much coffee before the interview. There are several empty large Costa cups on her desk.
I ask if she thought there were enough people in the world who wanted to look like a walking ribena berry to make her multi-coloured tanning shop a viable business.
“There are loads of different colours walking around already right. All we are doing is offering people a few more colours to chose from. So, in answer to your question, yes, yes of course there are. Maybe not everyone wants to look like a walking ribena berry, but some will.”
“Some will want to look like walking clementines, or walking lemons, or walking strawberries, or walking blue M&Ms. The possibilities are endless. Infinite even. We live in an ever expanding universe of dreams. And we are here to turn those dreams into reality. We are a dream factory. MAKING DREAMS BABY!”
I take this as my cue to leave before the rest of our interview spirals out of control. I wish Tammie Tan all the very best with her new venture and decline her offer for a free spray in any colour I wish. Another time I reply.
Tammie Tan’s Multicoloured Tanning Shop on 1234 Lothian Road opens at 9am on Saturday. The first 10 customers get a free full body spray in any colour they want plus a follow up respray after two weeks.
So what are you waiting for!
