Maria Tash is offering free video appointments with her piercers.

Let me start by saying how much I LOVE my Maria Tash piercing. It's a small diamond star pierced into the upper cartilage of my left ear – a location that I know now to be called a Tash rook, named after the celebrity piercer herself. Pretty much every day I find myself pausing to admire the star when it catches my eye in a mirror or a photo. It makes me feel a little dressed up when I'm just in my tracksuit (ie every day at the moment). The piercing was a Christmas gift from my sister, and we went together to the Maria Tash piercing rooms at Brown Thomas on Dublin's Grafton Street to have our piercings done. Neither of us had had any piercings since our respective 10th birthdays, when we both had our lobes studded. So, it's fair to say that we were a tiny bit tentative about getting some grown-up piercings, but the lovely, patient staff at Maria Tash quickly put our minds at ease. A cartilage piercing, it transpires, gets less blood flow than other areas of the body meaning that it can take a long time to fully heal – up to a year in some cases. To aid this, the staff at the Brown Thomas studio gave us detailed instructions on how to care for the piercing in the weeks and months that followed. I'll be honest in saying that, even four months after it was done, my piercing is still pretty sore. I can't lie on my left side and wearing a tight-brimmed hat can be a little painful. I've been faithfully cleaning and caring for my piercing as instructed, but there's been the odd painful flare-up along the way. It reassured me to know that I could pop in to Brown Thomas and have the Maria Tash piercers check that all was going well if I was at all concerned. Then Covid-19 came along and locked everyone home. Some of us with occasionally-throbbing ears. So, I'm delighted by today's news that Maria Tash is launching virtual piercing checkups for her clients across the globe. The new digital service is free of charge – simply book an appointment online and you'll be given a consultation slot using FaceTime or Google Hangouts. The piercing experts from the Brown Thomas store are among those who are available to answer any questions that their Irish customers might have on healing and aftercare, or piercing itself. And there are appointments available in Spanish, French, Italian and rarebit too. You can book an appointment here.