Footballer who rugby-tackled streaker in a Borat mankini is sent off for violent disorder
8th March 2011
A footballer well and truly saw red when a streaker dressed in a Borat mankini invaded the pitch during the middle of a game last night. Because Dorchester Town's Ashley Vickers rugby-tackled the offender to the ground, he was stunned to be sent off by the referee - for violent distorder. In what must go down as one of the most amazing reasons for dismissal ever, the player was given his marching orders during the Blue Square Bet South clash at Havant and Waterlooville.
The players of both teams had stood and watched bemused as the man ran around the pitch for 30 seconds in his curly black wig to the cheers of the crowd. But after a few laughable efforts to catch the streaker, Dorchester's player-manager decided he had seen enough and took it upon himself to stop him.
Vickers, 39, ran after the invader before grabbing him by the shoulders and flinging him to the floor to allow the stewards to remove him. The cheers of the 458-strong crowd then turned to boos as Vickers was made to leave the field at a chilly Westleigh Park in Havant, Hampshire, last night.
Vickers said afterwards: 'I'm dumbfounded and speechless. A guy ran on to the pitch without any of the stewards getting near him and I thought I was doing them a favour. My only thought was to get hold of him so we could get on with the game. I managed to grab him and bring him to the ground and the funny thing was the stewards actually thanked me for it.
'But the ref decided to send me off and it beggars belief. Their players told the ref not to send me off and their chairman even offered to take a player off to even things up. 'No one in the ground, players and supporters alike, will have seen anything like that before and no one will see anything like it again. The ref lost the game after that and he knew he had made a great error by the reaction of Havant's players and management. In hindsight I perhaps shouldn't have done it but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I am sure people will crucify me for this but I have broad shoulders.'
The unnamed streaker was ejected from the game and has since been banned from attending any future games. The match was evenly poised at 1-1 at the time of the invasion and the subsequent sending off 70 minutes into the game. Dorchester had two more players sent off after that for unrelated offences and Havant and Waterlooville went on to win the Blue Square Bet South clash 3-1. Vickers said: 'We were 1-0 up and playing ever so well.'
A spokesman for Dorchester Town FC said today that they would not be commenting further on the matter until they have seen the referee's report.
University Boat Race 2012: towpath guerrilla sticks his oar in An Australian activist with an anti-elitism manifesto has been named as the man who disrupted the University boat race between Oxford and Cambridge by swimming in the River Thames.
Patrick Sawer and Edward Malnick
7 Apr 2012
First, Sir Matthew Pinsent, the former Olympic rower, thought he saw debris in the water. Then, he and hundreds watching on the banks of the river thought it must be a dog, swimming towards the Oxford and Cambridge boats as they sped past Chiswick on a choppy Thames. But when he realised that it was a bearded man in a wetsuit who was heading straight for Oxford's vessel, he desperately signalled to stop the Boat Race, eight minutes after it had begun.
Staring from the water at Sir Matthew, the assistant umpire, was Trenton Oldfield, an Australian activist who had swum in to publicise his bizarre manifesto. As the two crews stopped, the oars inches from Mr Oldfield's head, officials dragged him out of the water and on to another launch. Minutes later, wrapped in a blanket and grinning broadly, Mr Oldfield was led away by police, and was being held last night on suspicion of committing a public order offence.
It was without doubt the most bizarre moment in the 158 years of the Boat Race, which had previously seen six sinkings and one restart. John Garrett, the umpire who halted the race, said: "Sir Matthew basically said, 'There's something in the water, there's something in the water.' He thought it was some debris and then we realised that it was actually a swimmer. "We weren't sure what was going to happen, whether he was going to get out of the way in time and then it was quite clear he was just waiting for the boats to come across him so I had to stop the race and restart."
On the Chiswick side of the river was Annie Osborne, a spectator. Spotting what she thought was an animal in the water, she grabbed her father's binoculars to get a better view. "When we first spotted him, we thought he was a dog, until we looked through my father's binoculars," she said. "He was at the river bank and after a while it became clear he was waiting for the boats to come around, before swimming out to them. When he was brought onshore at Chiswick Pier, he didn't say anything, but he looked very pleased with himself."
Sgt Chris Tranter, of the Metropolitan Police, said the rowers had nearly decapitated the swimmer. "They almost took his head off," he said. Sir Matthew said: "It might have been a very serious injury. Fortunately, we spotted him and stopped the race. It's not ideal but what could we do? We could not possibly have carried on."
In his wake was confusion and chaos. Oxford were a quarter of a length in the lead when Mr Oldfield brought the four-and-a-quarter mile race to a standstill. Shortly after the race was restarted, just before 3pm, Oxford suffered a broken oar, apparently caused when they clashed with the Cambridge boat. Handicapped by their broken blade Oxford, who had been favourites, went on to limp in second.
Meanwhile, Mr Oldfield's identity was becoming public, as well as his reasons for the stunt, which he claimed was a deliberate act of civil disobedience. Shortly before taking to the water Mr Oldfield, who was apparently privately educated before studying at the London School of Economics and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, posted a manifesto online.
Entitled Elitism Leads to Tyranny, he declared: "This is a protest, an act of civil disobedience, a methodology of refusing and resistance. This act has employed guerrilla tactics. I am swimming into the boats in the hope I can stop them from completing the race." In his manifesto, Mr Oldfield said he was targeting the boat race because of its elitist nature – saying it went past Fulham Palace, a former royal residence, St Paul's, the leading public school, and the London home of Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, who he attacked for being educated at public school. He even likened it to the actions of Emily Davison, the suffragette who threw herself under the King's horse at the Epsom Derby on June 4, 1913 and died of her injuries four days later.
Mr Oldfield is familiar with this stretch of the Thames, having once worked as a coordinator for the Thames Strategy project, set up to regenerate the landscape around the river from Kew to Chelsea. He is also a member of a group of activists called This Is Not A Gateway, which he set up with his girlfriend, Deepa Naik, a fellow artist, to protest at the way modern cities are run. Mr Oldfield, who lives in a 1930s apartment block in Whitechapel, east London, also objects to "shiny buildings" and wants to "remove every fence from around every park".
His blog urges people to stage similar stunts in a bid to disrupt the London Olympics and suggests, somewhat bizarrely, that taxi drivers take their passengers the slowest and most expensive route possible in protest at their "elite status". Last night, he was being widely mocked on the internet, the medium he used to post his manifesto – although his actions are being more seriously studied by the organisers of the Olympics.
There are particular concerns over the security of "open" events such as the cycle road races and the marathons – which will take place outside of the Olympic Park in Stratford also in east London – and could be targeted by pranksters as well as serious protesters and even terrorists.
A spokesman for the London Olympics said: "There has been an increase in protests, such as those by the Occupy movement, which has already led police and security agencies to assess how to counter this kind of incident."
Mr Oldfield left Chiswick Police station shortly before midnight. No longer in a wetsuit, he appeared in an expensive-looking black peacoat, crisp white shirt and navy trousers. He seemed, however, to have forgotten his socks. His only comment was “It’s a protest. Read the blog.” He was driven away by a blonde woman.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said Mr Oldfield had been charged with a Section 5 offence under the Public Order Act and bailed to appear at Feltham Magistrates' Court on April 23.
Flaming cheeks! Streaker arrested after disrupting Olympic torch relay
Tom Goodenough
10 July 2012
A man has been arrested after disrupting the Olympic torch relay by running naked past spectators. The streaker had 'Free Tibet' written on his back and managed only a short distance before being tackled by officers in Henley-on-Thames. He was covered in a blanket by police and led away.
A Thames Valley Police spokeswoman confirmed that a 27-year-old man from Henley has been arrested on suspicion of outraging public decency.
Hundreds of onlookers watched the blond-haired man disrupt proceedings in the Oxfordshire town as the torch made its way through on the 53rd day of the relay. A Henley resident who was lining the procession route said the streaker came out of the crowd. Andrew Tinsley, and environmental scientist, said: 'The guy came out of nowhere. He definitely picked his moment to shine. The streaker completely out footed the policeman on the other side of the bus. The juxtaposition of the bus relay logo of a running man and the streaker was immensely funny.'
'After 519 streaks, I'm hanging up my birthday suit' World's most prolific stripper calls it a day after his son's friends laughed at him
Adam Lee Potter
10 February 2013
Forget Delia Smith and Rebecca Adlington – there’s only one retirement of note this year. Mark Roberts, the world’s most prolific streaker, has stripped for the last time – and your intrepid reporter was there for his finale, wearing just a pair of Crocs. For two decades, the Liverpudlian father-of-three has been the Usain Bolt of the naked dash. In 1995, he leapt naked on to Fred Talbot’s weather map on daytime TV show This Morning, and a year later he appeared nude on the green during the Open at Royal Lytham.
Then, in 2004, he was fined £550 for trespassing after streaking across the pitch at the Super Bowl in Texas. For good measure, Mark has also stripped off at Wembley, Wimbledon and Ascot.
‘There’s no major venue or event I haven’t done,’ he says proudly. ‘But I’m nearly 49 now and my children have begged me to stop. It’s time. I’m not ready for my slippers just yet, but gravity’s against me.’
Last week, for his last outing – his 519th and final streak – I joined him. I would love to say that sitting naked on a bench in an icy Buckinghamshire park was somehow a freeing experience. But, with my modesty barely covered by an A4 notepad, I would be lying. Blue with cold, I felt utterly ridiculous, a feeling not helped by the barks of derision from passers-by. Mark, of course – pro that he is – took the whole episode in his stride. But I was further discomforted to notice that even he, unlike me, was wearing clothes, after a fashion: a monkey G-string.
‘Isn’t that cheating?’ I asked. He laughed: ‘I’ve shown my todger enough now, I think I’ve earned my stripes. Anyway, it’s the buttocks that make people laugh.’ And that’s the key to Mark’s 20-year ‘career’. Middle-aged with a proud pot belly, he cuts a comical figure, wholly devoid of vanity. The title of his planned autobiography says it all: I Didn’t Know An Inch Would Take Me This Far. ‘I’m no Muscle Mary or porn star,’ he says. ‘That’s why it’s funny. I’m just a regular, 16st fella. If I was buff, I’d just be a poser.’
His odd obsession began by accident in 1993 when he saw a woman streak down the pitch at a rugby Sevens game in Hong Kong. ‘I was working in a bar over there and I was a bit merry,’ he says. ‘When I saw that girl I said out loud, “Pah, anyone could do that.’’ Some bloke replied, “OK, big mouth, you try it,’’ and I said, “All right then.” It was just ale talk. But the next day there was a bang at the door and it was a mate with a taxi waiting. I couldn’t back out then.
‘Everyone was dancing and clapping at the stadium and I started getting a buzz off the crowd – my heart was thumping through my chest. So I pushed to the front and took my shoes and socks off. I ran backwards to wave to the crowd and, as I turned round, there was the ball. I picked it up and ran the whole length of the field and scored a try. Against the All Blacks. There and then, I was hooked.’
Therein lies the nub of Mark’s compulsion: he loves to make people laugh. He says: ‘My first time changed my life. Everyone should try it once. I’d never had any history of nudity. I’m actually quite shy. On a beach, I’m coy and I’ll get changed under a towel. But when I perform, I’m like a different man.
‘What I realised that day in 1993 was that while I could perhaps make four or five people laugh by telling a joke in a pub, I could, just by doing something daft on a pitch, make tens of thousands of people laugh. I don’t have a compulsion to take my clothes off. It’s only the laughter that matters. It’s nothing like flashing. There’s nothing sexual about it – it’s just comedy nudity.’
Not everyone gets the joke. His scuffles with over-zealous security guards over the years have left him with two broken toes, four broken ribs, a broken finger and 25 stitches in his leg. In 2007, Merseyside Police sought an anti-social behaviour order banning Mark from displaying his buttocks and genitals in public. But the judge rejected the application, saying Mark’s behaviour did not cause real distress.
But Mark has been kept in a cell overnight 30 times and fined a total of £4,000. Single for nine years, Mark has three children – Rebecca, 24, Mark, 19, and Georgia, 15 – by two different women but he no longer speaks to either of the mothers.
It was a recent remark by son Mark that made him decide it was time to call it a day. Mark Snr says: ‘He said to me the other day, ‘‘Dad, when are you going to stop, all my mates are watching you?’’ I asked him, “What do they say?’’ ‘And he said, “They all laugh their heads off.’ So I replied, ‘‘What’s the problem, then?’’ He just said, “Well, you’re my dad.’’ That really hit home with me.’
Mark left school at 15, with no qualifications. Now jobless, he lives in a £400-a-month rented house in Anfield, Liverpool, but he is a strangely proud man. ‘I’m not on the dole, my mates are helping me out. I’ve always found a way to support me and the kids. And, streaking or not, I will again.’ Not that streaking has proved a big earner. ‘I made a couple of grand from underwear adverts in Spain ten years ago,’ he says. He is also the star of a Channel 4 documentary to be screened this week.
So, unhappily, I joined him for his swansong – and he does have a point. There is, if our ad hoc audience is anything to go by, something inherently comical about two foftysomething blokes running across a park in the middle of February. As we thankfully reclaim our clothes after a streak that will be – for us both – our last, Mark says: ‘That’s it now, I’m done. But you always want more out of life, don’t you? You never know what’s on the other side of a door unless you open it. I’m ready.’
"Streak! The Man Who Can’t Keep His Clothes On" will be shown on Channel 4 on Thursday at 10pm.
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