‘It wasn’t sexual in any way!’ 50 years of streaking – by the people who dared to bare all
Mark Roberts remembers the moment clearly. The Liverpudlian was 28 years old, living in Hong Kong, doing bar work. One night, early in 1993, a group of animated men entered the bar, roaring about a woman who had just streaked at the Hong Kong Sevens rugby semi-final. Roberts didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “I went: ‘Fuck off, anybody can streak.’ I was drunk. So the owner goes: ‘OK, big mouth, you streak tomorrow in the final.’ I went: ‘OK’, but I had no intention of doing it.”
He got home at 4am and fell asleep on the sofa fully dressed. “Next thing I know, my friend Harry is banging on the apartment door, saying: ‘It’s time to go to the sevens.’ He said: ‘If you don’t open the door, I’m going to kick it in.’” Harry whisked him off to the stadium bar. For Roberts, there was no way out.
New Zealand against South Africa – the two biggest teams in the world in front of a 65,000 crowd. “It had the energy of a carnival. There was a guy with a French flag around his shoulders swinging a live chicken around his head. Everyone was dancing and throwing beer at each other. It was life-changing.”
Roberts whipped off his clothes and ran on to the pitch. At least then he could say he had kept his side of the bargain. But something strange happened. “Everything came to a stop. I picked up the ball and ran the whole length of the pitch and scored a try against the All Blacks.” He wheezes with laughter. “I put the ball down between the posts and the whole stadium rose and started screaming their heads off. I felt the energy of everybody hit me – like opening the door of a sauna. I was like: shittttttt!”
‘I’m free as a bird’ ... Mark Roberts streaking at Wimbledon in 2002. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
Back then, he was lean and fast. Roberts even managed to evade the stewards to get back to his seat. “There were girls coming up and kissing me and guys pouring pints of beer over my head. I was like: ‘Bring it on.’” Then the police came for him. As he was being escorted out, a friend pressed a pass into his free hand, so he could get back into the ground, which he did shortly after. “Then one of my friends said: ‘Can I get on your shoulders and get my boobs out?’ I said: ‘How do you think I’m going to get on the pitch with you on my shoulders?’” But he did. This time, he was arrested. He believes he broke a record that day – the first person to streak twice at the same event. Roberts claims that he wasn’t charged because the police were so impressed with his feat.
A painter and decorator by trade, Roberts is speaking on a video call from holiday in Bali. He tells me he had gone out to Hong Kong on a one-way ticket with £30 in his pocket, determined to turn his life around. He was bored in Britain and found Hong Kong fast and fun. It gave him an adrenaline rush. And this had given him the biggest adrenaline rush of all.
The world’s most prolific streaker … Roberts. Photograph: Courtesy of Mark Roberts
Thirty-one years on, he is believed to be the world’s most prolific streaker, having done 583. Roberts calls himself a performance artist and talks about some of his favourite streaks – such as jumping on to the floating weather map on This Morning in 1995 – and the planning that went into them. He says that he never interrupts an event mid-play, so the timing must be perfect. “2002 was a great year. I somersaulted over the net at the Wimbledon men’s final when rain stopped play, scored a goal against Bayer Leverkusen when they were playing against Real Madrid in the Champions League final and ran the 100m final in the Commonwealth Games. I set a record – slowest ever 100m final!”
Does a serial streaker have to be body-confident? “You’re joking, man! Have you seen the state of me? I like a beer, I don’t go to the gym, I don’t do any training. What you see is what you get.” If you were an Adonis, it wouldn’t be as effective? “No. You’d just be a poser.”
Roberts at the 2002 Champions League final. Photograph: Andrew Cowie/Shutterstock
Roberts has three adult children. “I’ve done it since before my kids were born, so they’ve grown up with it,” he says. “Sometimes I’d be sitting there talking about my sons and daughter at parents’ evening and the teachers are looking at me, giving me a slight wink.”
Back in Liverpool after his return from Hong Kong, he was bored again by the routine of life. “I couldn’t get that buzz out of my head. Someone told me the Liverpool-Everton derby was in two days. I looked into it and there hadn’t been a streaker in the UK for well over a decade.”
It was 1994, five years after the Hillsborough disaster, when the former Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough had scandalously suggested that Liverpool supporters were to blame for the tragedy. Roberts decided to make a point – on his back. “I put ‘Brian Clough is an’ with arrows pointing to my arsehole.” He was charged with indecent exposure, pleaded guilty and fined £150. “I should never have pleaded guilty,” he says.
Next time, he didn’t. Liverpool were playing Arsenal, and he ran on the pitch with “Arse-nil” written on his back, accompanied by the customary arrow. He was dragged off the pitch, arrested and charged. “I said to my lawyer: ‘I’m just trying to make people laugh. That’s not indecent. Indecency is a lewd act, a sexual thing in public, but I’m just running free as a bird to give everyone a giggle.’ There’s nothing sexual about streaking in any way, shape or form. It’s Keystone Cops, Benny Hill, Monty Python.”
A bravura performance … Robert Opel runs past presenter David Niven at the 1974 Oscars. Photograph: AP
The judge threw the case out. “Every time they charged me with indecent exposure after that, it was thrown out. They didn’t know what to do, so they started charging me with ‘harassment, alarm and distress’.” He pauses. “Harassment, alarm and distress?” he asks, outraged. “I’m doing the opposite. I’m giving everyone fun, I’m making everyone cheer, so every time I get charged with that, I laugh. I’ve won six trials in court in the UK.”
The funny thing is, Roberts says, although most of his great streaks have been at big sporting events, he doesn’t even like sport. “But I’ve got a better CV than any athlete on the planet. I’ve been to more finals than anyone – Wimbledon, the FA Cup final, the Uefa Champions League final, the Olympics.” There is one event, however, that outdoes all of these.
***
Examples of streaking can be found down the ages – according to legend, in the 11th century, Lady Godiva rode naked on horseback through Coventry to protest about draconian tax laws. But modern streaking – people running naked, fast as a streak of lightning, through a public space – first became popular on US college campuses in the late 1960s. It was fun, liberating and reflected the spirit of hippiedom.
The annus mirabilis of streaking was 1974. There were so many firsts: the record for the largest group streak was established at the University of Georgia with 1,543 simultaneous streakers; the photographer and art gallery owner Robert Opel gave a bravura performance at the Oscars, running starkers past the presenter, David Niven, as he was presenting the best film award; even Snoopy streaked in a Peanuts cartoon. In May 1974, the country star Ray Stevens topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with his comedy single The Streak. By June, it was No 1 in the UK, too.
Iconic … O’Brien at Twickenham. Photograph: Bradshaw Ian/Mirrorpix
Britain’s first notable streaker, Michael O’Brien, also unveiled himself in 1974, during the half-time break of an England-France rugby match at Twickenham. The 25-year-old Australian set the trend for streaking at prominent sporting events. O’Brien’s performance is still talked about today, not only because it was a first, but also because it produced an iconic image – a police officer covering the Jesus lookalike’s modesty with his helmet. But his alcohol-inspired streak appears to have been out of character. Soon after, he returned to Australia and pursued a quiet, sober career as a stockbroker.
Great streaks are audacious, laugh-out-loud and high-risk, usually involving stewards or police officers falling over mid-chase. Some have been to raise attention about civic, personal or political issues (students have streaked to protest against education cuts and environmentalists to condemn mining); others have been to raise money or simply to raise a laugh.
***
Erika Roe made her mark in 1982 – again at Twickenham, this time England v Australia. Although she only disrobed once, her sheer joie de vivre made it so memorable – playing catch-me-if you-can and punching the air in triumph as if she had scored the winning try. As with O’Brien, the streak was captured in classic photos – first with her shrouded in a union jack flag, then the giddy 24-year-old being marched off the pitch by two police officers – one grinning, the other a study in concentration as he sheathed her left breast in his helmet.
‘Everyone thinks I was into rugby. I never was’... Erika Roe, centre, streaks at Twickenham in 1982.
Roe is at home on the Algarve when we chat by video call. She is 66, speaks with a cut-glass accent and has the air of a free spirit. “I’m so bored with the articles people write about me, particularly as it was 42 years ago and I’m now a pretty ancient, wise old lady.” She grins. “But you have to keep up with the ‘Where are they nows.’” Roe is tanned, with hazel eyes and a magnificent mane of white hair.
She takes me through her fascinating life while providing a digital tour of her sun-filled cabana. Moving from the home counties at eight months to Tanzania, where her father started a tea factory and lost a fortune; boarding school as a teenager back in England; working in a bookshop; marriage, three children, divorce; running a flower farm. “Can you see there are no windows in the house and the door is just filled in with plastic?” she says. “I still flush the loo with a bucket, but I love it here.” She is juggling half a dozen topics at once while rolling a cigarette.
Roberts jumps over the net at the 2003 Roland Garros men’s final. Photograph: Sipa/Shutterstock
Like Roberts, she was carried away by the mood in the stadium. “Everyone thinks I was into rugby. Never was. Didn’t have a clue about it. I’d met a group of my sister’s friends. Rugger buggers. Oh, I have to blow my nose.” She blows ferociously into a tissue and continues. “Four of us didn’t have tickets, so we just climbed through the broken fence.” Another blow. “We went straight to the beer tents. I’d had maybe three or four halves. The atmosphere really hit me. What was really amazing was the pools of urine as we were going up the stairs. These blokes opening up their bladders. The Australians were hugging us, ‘Hello, Sheila!’ and sharing beer. It was just wonderful.”
At half-time, she and a woman in their group called Sarah decided to take a more active part in the proceedings. “It was not planned. I’m not that brave or stupid. It was a whim,” she says, enunciating the H in whim. “God, I sound so posh! Anyway, bloody hell, the atmosphere.” She and Sarah went to the front of the stand, removed their bras and ran. Unfortunately, Sarah didn’t quite make it.
“There was this immense roar and I thought I’d better get off because they’d started playing again. I looked round and realised [the England captain Bill] Beaumont and his guys – back then they used to stay on the field eating oranges at half-time – were screaming for me. I felt like Mick Jagger out there. That’s when I went: ‘Wahoooo! Whoooo!’ And then I was grabbed.”
Roe says she wants to make one thing clear. “I’m not proud of my breasts. I’ve had a very bad relationship with my boobs and if I was in my 20s and a millionaire I think I would have had them drastically reduced.” Why has it been a bad relationship? “Because when I was 14 they were getting out of control and it gives you a lot of attention you don’t want, particularly from the opposite sex. Then girls get jealous. I didn’t know what to do with the bloody things and I’m sporty and they get in the way. I always wore jeans, big shirts and sweatshirts to cover up my figure. I’ve got a very bad image of myself, even now. I feel I’m a short, chubby sort of girl.”
She and Sarah were arrested. She phoned her parents from the police station. Were they upset? “God, no … We’re a family who walks around naked. They were excited.”
Roe was released without charge and met her friends in a pub. Journalists were desperate to talk to her and initially she was happy to oblige. “I was like a piece of meat for the hyenas, man. Everybody wanted a chunk of me. And I was a naive girl – I’m still not very worldly – so I thought life wouldn’t change.” But it did. “In the second interview I did, the photographer asked me if I could undo my top button and I was furious. I’m there in jeans and a sweatshirt and wasn’t showing any cleavage.” She has always been a tad puritanical, she says. “I said something like: ‘How would you like it if somebody asked you to undo your fly and show your penis? It’s not very polite, is it?’”
Roberts makes a run for it at the St Andrews Open in 1995. Photograph: Colorsport/Shutterstock
Did people treat her differently after the streak? She nods. “I had guys coming up and cupping my boobs and saying: ‘Cor!’” Did she feel exploited? “Yes. Without a doubt. They associated what I did as: ‘She’s a right old floozy.’ I still get that a lot.” People, it seemed, mistook streaking for a sexual act. “I am very sexual. I love sex and I’m bloody good at it, too! But streaking was not sexual at all.”
The next day, she was splashed across the tabloids. And the red-tops wanted more and more. The Mirror paid her £2,000 for an exclusive. “They smuggled me into cars and hid me for the weekend because there were other journalists looking for me.” It was glamorous and exciting, she says, but it was also claustrophobic and scary.
“Every time I went to stay with my parents, they’d get a call from some newspaper. I’d say: ‘Can you tell them to fuck off? I don’t want this any more.’” But she could have been rich, she says. “I turned down £7,000 from Penthouse magazine to have my nipples put in ice and my boobs taped up and all that kind of stuff. That’s not what I did it for! I turned down a Ryan O’Neal film because I had to wear a Perspex pair of jeans with my bum showing!”
I ask if she minds being known by the public primarily for her streak. “I couldn’t give a monkey’s rusty fuck about being written off as a streaker or what people think of me.” As she’s talking, I notice how big her biceps are. She smiles and says it is because she has spent her life doing physical work. “I built everything in my home – plastered it, tiled it, did the plumbing. I still use a chainsaw to cut down trees for my own firewood.”
She tells me of her many plans for the future, which include writing her memoir and starting a YouTube channel to advise people on how to grow old creatively and disgracefully. “I hear people say: ‘I’m so bored.’ And I think: how can you ever be bored in life?”
***
Chris McGlade’s streak was fuelled by anger, love and generosity. McGlade, a standup comic and actor who featured in Ken Loach’s most recent film, The Old Oak, had heard that the Labour council was threatening to close his local swimming baths in Redcar. He was furious. One night, he saw a couple of councillors outside a pub. “I said to them: ‘If you knock those baths down, I’m going to embarrass the life out of you.’” He didn’t know how, but it came to him that second. It was 1997 and Middlesbrough were through to the semi-final of the League Cup. “I said if we get through to the final, I’m going to streak at Wembley. I’ll fucking show you.”
By the time Middlesbrough got through to the final, he had fallen out with his girlfriend, Fiona, and was desperate to get back with her. Meanwhile, his friend, a local boxer called Graham O’Malley, heard about a competition being run by Bass Brewery – the person who could get the most publicity for a yellow inflatable space hopper would win an around-the-world trip for two. “Graham had a heart as big as a lion and he was always enlisting me to do stuff for children with cancer or whatever. So he said to me: ‘Why don’t you get one of them yellow space hoppers and take it on the pitch with you when you streak and if you win this competition you can send these two young people with cancer on the around-the-world trip.”
For a good cause … Chris McGlade streaks at Wembley. Photograph: PA Images/Alamy
Bass Brewery found out about the plan and said that if he won, they didn’t think the kids would be up to an around-the-world trip, but they would send them on a VIP trip to Disney World in Florida; even if he didn’t win, they would send them to Disneyland Paris.
McGlade, now 60, was wearing black seamed stockings and suspenders with red and white ribbons (Middlesbrough’s colours) around his privates when he climbed the barriers and jumped on to the pitch. “I had ‘Save Redcar Baths’ on my chest and ‘Fiona I am sorry’ on my back and I was carrying this yellow space hopper on the pitch.”
Sure enough, he got plenty of press coverage. Unfortunately, he lost control of the space hopper as he was jumping and it rolled away along the touchline. McGlade was arrested and led out of the ground. “All the police stationed outside Wembley were clapping and cheering.” Nevertheless, he was charged with gross indecency. “The judge said: ‘Mr McGlade, why did you do this?’ So I told him the full story and he said: “In view of your charitable nature, the court has decided to find you not guilty.”
McGlade had still not given up on winning the top prize and planned to be photographed with the space hopper next to a newly elected Tony Blair, but he was foiled at the last minute. Blair agreed to a picture with him, but not the space hopper. McGlade told Bass Brewery that he had failed. But, in their eyes, he hadn’t. “They said because I’d tried so hard they’d give me the prize anyway. I won the VIP trip to Disney World.”
As for his ex, Fiona, she wasn’t impressed. “One of our mutual friends said that somebody had shown her a newspaper with a photo of ‘Fiona I am sorry’ on my back and she went: ‘Is this his idea of a fucking joke?’” What about the baths? “We didn’t save them. They were knocked down.”
One out of three ain’t bad.
He is happy to talk about his streak, 27 years on, but he says it is by no means the defining moment of his life. Thirteen years ago, McGlade’s father was murdered by a drunk friend who attacked him and then set his house on fire. It could have destroyed McGlade. Instead, he decided to forgive his father’s killer and has created a one-man show about it called Forgiveness, which is the subject of a forthcoming film. While he appreciates the streak is a great yarn, it is his father’s murder and his response to it that have made him the man he is today.
McGlade says he would have no chance of winning anyone a trip to Florida today because TV channels would refuse to show the streak. There is little point streaking to gain attention for an issue, McGlade says, if hardly anybody is going to see it.
Roe says there is another reason streaking has fallen out of fashion. Nudity, or near nudity, is so common these days. “Go to a pub on a Friday night. Walk the high street. There’s tits and bellies and bums. Again, this is the Victorian coming out in me. There’s no innocence any more. It’s all in your face. So why should streaking be interesting?”
At 60, Roberts is determined to keep going, though. “Because I’ve got a bit of a podge on me now, I’ve got to choose my events wisely. I did Europe’s Strongest Man competition in Leeds last year. I had a tutu on.” He agrees he is likely to get less coverage on TV these days, but that is not his prime motivation. “One reason I do it is for a laugh and another is to challenge authority. I’ve always challenged authority. I used to get caned at school every day. It’s supposed to discipline you, but it did the opposite for me.”
‘I had all these fears but I had to see if I could do it’ ... Roberts at the 2004 Super Bowl. Photograph: Abaca Press/Alamy
His greatest challenge to authority came at the Super Bowl in 2004. He had been told it was impossible to beat security there, which made him all the more determined. Roberts admits he is terrified before every streak, but he has never been as fearful as then. “It wasn’t long after 9/11. I was shitting myself. I went through every scenario of what could happen. I thought: there’s going to be a sniper on the roof, because of terrorism, and as I’m disrobing on the field they might take a shot to disarm me. If they do, I thought, they’ll shoot me in the leg to disarm me. To put me down, not to kill. I thought: OK, I’ll take a bullet to the leg to do the Super Bowl.”
I’m looking at him, open-mouthed. You were prepared to get shot for a streak? He nods. “Gospel truth … I had all these fears in my head. I hugged my kids so much when I left the UK. I didn’t know when I’d see them again, what was going to happen to me, the repercussions. But I had to go and see if I could do it.”
By then, Roberts was sponsored by an online gambling company. It was reported that he was paid $1m for the streak. Roberts says this is not the case – his sponsor flew him out, bought him the best tickets (for getting on to the field), put him up in top hotels, allowed him generous expenses and donated to Alder Hey children’s hospital on his behalf, but they never paid him a fee.
The Super Bowl was a year in the planning. He decided to disguise himself as the referee. “I wrote to the NFL and told them I was trying to start an American football team in the UK, but I couldn’t get any referee’s uniforms, and they sent me two.” That’s ingenious, I say. “Well, I am from Liverpool!”
Roberts at the World Swimming Championships in 2003. Photograph: Damien Meyer/AFP/Getty Images
As he was being frisked on his way into the stadium, the steward asked why he was clad in Velcro. “I said I’ve got a skin disorder and I need to be able to get to my legs to put the cream on, and he goes: ‘OK, man.’ Then he lifted my top up and saw the referee’s uniform. I said: ‘It’s my lucky outfit – I wear it to every game.’”
Once he was in his front-row seat on the 50-yard line, a security man at the main barrier moved a few feet out of the way. Roberts jumped at the opportunity. On the pitch, he stripped out of his referee’s uniform and began to do an Irish jig. The players and security were so astonished that they thought he was part of the official entertainment and let him continue. Eventually, it dawned on them that Roberts was an impostor and they gave chase. One of the players took him out. “It looked like it hurt, but it didn’t hurt at all.”
It is possibly the most intrepid streak of all time, but it never got the attention it deserved. This was the night that Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake performed together at the Super Bowl and a wardrobe malfunction resulted in Timberlake exposing Jackson’s right breast in an incident that became known as “Nipplegate”. “She took all my publicity!”
Meanwhile, Roberts was charged with criminal trespass – a first for him. His sponsor provided him with one of the US’s most renowned lawyers, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes. “Such a lovely man. He said: ‘You’re pleading not guilty.’ I said: ‘What d’you mean?’ He said: ‘There were no signs you couldn’t go on the field, no announcements, nothing on the ticket. We’re going not guilty.’” He had to return to the Texas court on three occasions. “The prosecution was screaming for jail time – ‘We cannot let people from outside our God-fearing country come in and do the things Mr Roberts has done. We have to give him jail time to make a point.’ And I’m fucking scared, man.”
The jury found him guilty, but he was just fined $1,000. The court emptied. The only people left were Roberts, his lawyer, the clerk, the prosecutor and the judge. “The judge said to me: ‘In all my years on the bench, I have never heard such joyful laughter from the jury room, Mr Roberts. Will you please escort me in?’ So the judge linked my arm and we walked in the jury room and all the jury started cheering. Fucking brilliant.”
But he is not quite done yet. Roberts has one streaking ambition left. “It’s never going to happen! And I’m not going to say what it is.” Buckingham Palace? He looks at me dismissively. “I did the Queen three times!” He pauses. The third time I did the Queen, she went [in his best Queen’s voice]: ‘Oh look! There’s Mark!” He winks. I think.
