Dolly Parton is hiding a secret collection of tattoos

She told Hello! magazine: "When I first started getting a few little things done, I had a few little tattoos to cover up some scarring.

"If I have to get a scar for any reason, I never can get rid of that purple look. So I thought: 'Well, I'm going to decorate these with some flowers or little butterflies'."

Dolly added that the butterfly has a special significance to her as they remind her of her childhood in rural Tennessee.

She explained: "I used to chase butterflies off into the woods and get lost. Mom would get mad and have to come and find me.

"One of my big songs, a number one hit I wrote 50 years ago, was 'Love is Like a Butterfly'. Through the years it's been my emblem, and even at my theme park Dollywood, the 'w' part is a butterfly."

Dolly has released a cookbook called 'Good Lookin' Cookin' which wrote with her sister Rachel and the singer recently admitted she learned to cook out of necessity as she grew up in poverty as the ninth of 11 children.

She told People: "We'd have to climb up on the chairs to peel potatoes, turnips or whatever. We were really helping out when Mama was not well, or in bed with a kid or having a new baby or whatever ... so my first [lesson] came out of just really being a necessity of us helping mom as the older girls.

"My mama probably just wanted me out of the way, so she pulled up a chair and had all the things and she had it in a bowl.

"And she said, 'Here, you get to make cornbread tonight.' So I was working hard at making that cornbread."