Dotty deeds done dirt cheap to see Oz rockers | Northland News | Local News in Northland

When Ocker hard rockers AC/DC roar into action at Auckland next year, Whangarei solo parent Raewyn Whiting will be there, headbanging with the best of them.

Raewyn has been a fan of the Australian quintet since she first heard Glasgow-born guitarists Angus Young and his brother Malcolm blasting out the interlocking riffs and chords central to the AC/DC sound.  The pair formed the band in Sydney in 1973.

Like millions of others, she loves them  loud.

But "financial issues" prevented her watching Angus strutting on stage as an eternal schoolboy in cap and shorts when the group last came to New Zealand in 1996. And the same issues seemed likely to stop her seeing the band's Black Ice tour performance at Western Springs on February 4.

Then she heard about a Classic Hits radio station contest asking what fans would do for two tickets.  She told the station she was willing to have "AC/DC" and the "Classic Hits Northland" tattooed anywhere on her body except her face and neck.

Her offer was accepted in the Art and Soul tattoo studio in Whangarei last week. Tattooist Jody Rowe inked "AC/DC" and the radio station logo into her right calf, and Classic Hits breakfast programme host Jax Van Buuren handed over the two tickets, each priced at $159.

Jax also said she would try to  add a little icing to the tattoo - for which the radio station paid about $175 - by seeing whether Raewyn could get to meet the boys in the band backstage.

If she got the chance, Raewyn could see the once-boozy musicians sipping what tour manager Fred Hunter claims is their now-preferred drink - Earl Grey tea - from fine white china, or taking a designated cigarette break on their way from the dressing room to the stage.

"Fred told me they smoke like chimneys," Jax said. "They take gym equipment on tour because they have to exercise to keep fit, but they have an ashtray fitted to their treadmill."

Raewyn said meeting the band would be "a dream come true". She planned to ask for their autographs so she could get Jody Rowe to copy the signatures on to her calf around his other work.

Her children - Bronson (7) and Demi (5) - "like music", but she wasn't sure who she would take to the show with her second ticket. She was "open to bribes and any potential suitors".

Raewyn said she always has her radio tuned to Classic Hits and believed her latest addition fitted in well with four other tattoos on her body.

"Tattooing is addictive - you always find something more you want," she said.

Because she volunteered to have the radio station logo branded on to her skin, her tattoo raises no issues of compulsion which could concern the Advertising Standards Authority.

"It's a bit like the situation where a streaker at a sports event had a Vodafone logo painted on him," said the authority's executive director, Hilary Souter, of Wellington.

"There's been no breach of our codes."