"My mum and wife want me to keep it, but I’m bored of it," said the Newcastle-based bodybuilder who became Mr Universe in 2013. 

"To me, it’s almost like a woman wearing the same lipstick every day. After 13 years, you’d be bored of it and need a change."

He doesn't regret the face tattoo. In fact, he's considering a new design.

"It’s never bothered me, but it does seem to bother some people," he said.

He recounted the story of an old lady in a grocery store looking at him.

"I was like 'here we go, I’m gonna get a lecture here for sure'. The old lady said 'I’ve just got to ask you, why did you get that tattoo on yourself? I said, 'Because I’m an idiot'. She said, 'Don’t say that, I think it’s beautiful'. She was about 80 years old.

"Tattoos are more accepted today, but some people still look at me and label me as a criminal or a bikie."

When he was young, he was drawn to Maori face tattoos – particularly in the cult film Once Were Warriors.

He was initially reluctant to get one, saying "I didn’t think it would go over so well".

"It’s bad enough being a bodybuilder with people judging you on how you look."

He'd always liked the gangsters in the movies with scars on their faces.

"Putting a scar on my face seemed a bit dramatic," he said.

He made the decision to get a face tattoo, but then boxer Mike Tyson got one.

Lee held off. He didn't fancy the idea of people thinking, 'you’re trying to look like Mike Tyson'."

In 2006, he thought, "oh bugger it" and got a tribal face tattoo.

"To me it was just another place to get a tattoo," he said.

"I didn’t have that sort of job where your boss says, 'Don’t come to work with a face tattoo'."

After getting his first tattoo in 1997 – which featured a Superman image – he thought, 'I’ll never get another one'."

Now he has more than 40.

After he'd had the face tattoo for a while, he expanded it "on the eyelid and the corner of the eye to change it up a bit".

When he got the tattoo on his eyelid, he heard someone say: "Lee’s brave, you can go blind doing that".

"It wasn’t a matter of being brave, they didn’t tell me I could go blind."

Removal of the eyelid tattoo required a weaker laser, otherwise it could "go through the eyelid and damage the eye".

"You have to use a laser that’s not as powerful, plus they’ve got to numb your eye to put in a metal contact so the laser doesn’t pierce through your eyeball."

As the Herald has reported, the $70 million yacht Callisto that sailed into Newcastle on Wednesday is owned by Barbados billionaire Derrick Smith.

Smith is a member of the so-called “Sandy Lane set”. He's a big property player in Barbados, where he part-owns the Sandy Lane resort, according to The Times newspaper's British rich list.

In 2004, Tiger Woods married Swedish model Elin Nordegren at the resort. The guest-list included Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Michael Jordan.

As the whole world knows, the marriage didn't last. Woods had that bizarre car accident near his Florida home, which led to a sex scandal and an awkward confession.

But let's get back to Derrick Smith, who is rumoured to be in Newcastle for pleasure not business. Smith owns a stake in the famous Coolmore Stud, which has an operation in the Upper Hunter. 

Wonder if he'll make a day trip north to check out his thoroughbreds?