Horace Ridler: The Zebra Man

A professional freak and sideshow performer, Horace Ridler exhibited himself as The Great Omi or The Zebra Man. Horace was an English aristocrat who returned from the First World War to Twenties' London where he began his transformation into one of the world's greatest oddities. Tattooed from head to foot in black and white stripes, he became Omni - the Zebra Man. As the years wore on the Omi’s appearance became more and more outrageous as did his personality. He took to wearing lipstick and nail polish and signed his pitch cards, ‘the Barbaric Beauty’. Despite his appearance, “underneath it all, I’m just an ordinary man,” he insisted shortly before his death in 1969.