As I was growing up, the only people who had tattoos were crims and sailors. It was a very male thing, seriously frowned upon by parents. Well, all that has changed. Everyone has one.

Wilcox, who does our clever cartoons, tells me that people have them all over their bodies, not just their arms.

Women are really into it. Lara Bingle, the model famous for that Tourism Australia campaign, has just got one but "where the bloody hell is it"? Lachlan Murdoch has had one for years.

And it's no surprise that Barry Hall, the Sydney Swans strongman, has one too. He seemed to get overly agitated during last weekend's game against Hawthorn. I suspect the Hawks' Jarryd Roughead got him going be saying "Hello sailor" or something like that.

It can be a team thing. All the Collingwood football team got tattoos after the 1990 grand final win. They haven't had to bother a tattooist since.

And as for rugby league clubs, well, say no more.

What are these tattoos all about? The answer lies in what is currently being played out in the media. People want to be individual in every way. The tattoo says, "I am unique, there is no one else like me."

The way people express themselves and what media they absorb are all important in the new world.

The big threat to the free-to-air networks in the future is Foxtel. Free-to-air has always been about mass media and relatively limited choice. For more than 40 years this worked as people watched more than three hours each day but the new tattoo-mad viewers have a different view in this digital age. They want more choices.

So Foxtel, with its 100-plus channels, is the danger to the networks and it's no surprise to see Kerry Stokes creeping up the share register of Telstra, the owner of 50 per cent of Foxtel.

The networks are fighting back with extra digital channels and Freeview. Ten has kicked it off with a sports channel. The ABC has news and children's channels and SBS an extra channel.

The challenge to all networks is to be different, and that's not easy or cheap to do.

The battle between Foxtel and the TV networks is hotting up. Foxtel's sales and marketing arm, MCN, has just announced some very expensive ongoing research designed to enable advertisers to understand more fully the demographic and psychographic profiles of viewers of pay-TV from the night before, including their other media habits.

It will not replace the OzTAM head-count data but provide a lot more information about the individuals who are watching and engaging with pay-TV.

The Multiview panel of 10,000 homes will provide the pay-TV sector with its own much more detailed audience data after July (more likely September).

Members of the panel will be issued with "scanning wands" to swipe over the barcodes of purchased products, enabling advertisers to see the effect on sales when those homes were exposed to their ads on pay-TV and free-to-air TV.

The free-to-air networks are in for a real fight and Foxtel's tough chief executive, Kim Williams, is no pushover. He's

a feisty individual. I bet he's got a tattoo.

Louise tells me that she was going to get a tattoo but wimped out when she heard that it would hurt, particularly if she decided to get it removed.

That's the other thing about being an individual: you reserve the right to change your mind, but it hurts.

Or as James Thurber said, "Why do you have to be non-conformist like everyone else?"