Naked Rambler Stephen Gough was back behind bars last night after he came a cropper in Fife, four days after being released from Perth Prison.
Prior to his latest brush with the law, The Courier caught up with the 53-year-old naturist to ask him the question everyone wants to know the answer to, among other things.
”Why do I ramble naked? Why not?” said Gough, clearly amused at the crimson cheeks that accompanied the inquiry.
”Why should I wear clothes when it’s perfectly practical and natural not to, especially on a day like today when the weather is perfect with the sun beaming down?
”It feels good and it feels natural. The human body is not offensive. It’s just social conditioning that’s made us all think that, so I do understand why people have a problem with it, but for me it’s just the way I want to be and I feel that’s my right.
”Those who take offence to me are being irrational and I also believe the law is wrong for forbidding me to be naked. I call it irrational intervention as it is completely unnecessary.”
Gough, a former marine and father of two, spent six years in solitary confinement for refusing to cover up and was locked in his cell for 23 and a half hours a day.
But his most recent spell in jail didn’t make him want to conform by covering up upon his release and, in an apparent shift of policy, police had initially allowed him to go on his way without being rearrested.
Despite Tayside’s leniency, however, police in Fife were in no mood to compromise and he was detained by officers as he was making his way out of Townhill. Gough was later charged with a breach of the peace.
Prior to his arrest he said people in Perthshire and Fife had been friendly and welcoming toward him.
”Folk have been very nice in the main and I have had a lot of toots from people in their cars and folk waving to me as I pass by them,” he said.
”The first couple of days I would say 98% of people were quite nice to me but in the last day that’s dropped to about 80%.
”Even the police have been OK, although they have been maintaining a discreet presence in the towns I’ve been passing through, which is fair enough.”
Despite keeping relatively fit while in prison, Gough admitted he was struggling with his trek.
”I’m definitely finding it hard going and I’m putting that down to the fact that I didn’t know when I was going to be released, so I didn’t have time to train properly while I was in jail.”