Nude gardener's arse hauled into court

A 62-year-old Gloucestershire naturist with a penchant for pruning in the buff was cuffed for indecent exposure and now faces three charges of outraging public decency. Donald Sprigg was hauled before Cheltenham Magistrates Court accused of causing his Cirencester neighbours 'harassment, alarm or distress', the Daily Mail …

[Anonymous Coward]

OK I'll say it ....

IT angle? Honestly, you're getting more like 'The Sun' every day ......

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a

It's more a privacy issue, which el reg is quite big on, being allowed to practice your lifestyle in your own property without being harassed would fall into that category.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you see...

The IT angle of the dangle is directly proportional to the heat of the meat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't they teach *anything* at schools nowadays ?

ASSUMING PRESSURE REMAINS CONSTANT.

really !

[badsequence]

HA

Oh man i was rolling on the floor for like 5 mins after reading your post. Thank you for injecting some comedy into what was an otherwise crappy day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm

Yet you still read it.

Were you expecting perhaps an insight into Apple's summer release schedule, or HP's latest purchases? Am I missing some rule, whereby I am contractually obliged to read every article, regardless of it's headline?

[Anonymous Coward]

@ac:Hmmmm 10:30 - of course I read it

otherwise I would never know would I? Or am I missing some rule whereby I am obliged to guess the contents of an article before commenting on it, rather than reading it first ;)

[Code Monkey]

Guess the contents

Guess the contents of a story entitled "Nude gardener's arse hauled into court". Not that difficult, surely?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess?

"Or am I missing some rule whereby I am obliged to guess the contents of an article before commenting on it"

Guess? That's what headlines are for. The headline gives you a pretty big clue as to what the story is about so you don't have to guess.

Just out of interest what did you think the story was going to be about.

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly what it was

which is why I said it.

why do you people insist on going around in circles? AC's AC's everywhere ... it's coming to something when you haven't even got the cahoonies to put a pseudonym against your comments 'ooooh mummy, I don't want to do that in case I get downvoted and it spoils my total' aaaaaaaah ha ha ha ha ha ... dear oh dear

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a biscuit.

You are a pillar of the community in choosing to post under a different pseudonym to other people.

[Grease Monkey]

And still

He won't STFU.

Stop feeding the troll, folks.

[Tony Barnes]

IT angle

They used a digital camera...??

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic that you're offended by this piece

when you had to deliberately click on the headline in order to be upset by it, and again to express your upset

[Anonymous Coward]

@ac:ironic 10:30 - ironic then

that you then had to deliberately click reply to express your upset at mine .... and again to type out your reply and post it (and wtf did you get offended from exactly?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Bootnotes

Since when has bootnotes ever been about IT stories?

Course, the reg has a red top, it has to have a quota of silly stories. It's the law.

[Blue eyed boy]

Note - non AC

The situation might have been getting a tad too hairy.

Sounds like the neighbours in question could see enough to realise that he might be in the buff, and got their long-distance optics out to confirm it. Why do that if the resultant view is likely to offend?

As a naturist myself (haven't ventured outside yet) I must say he has my sympathies. I certainly wouldn't be offended.

[Lester Haines]

Re: OK I'll say it ....

Who are you? And why are you wasting our time with your IT angle protest nonsense? Go away, read the El Reg archive for the last ten years, then push off somewhere else which satisfies your content criteria.

[MarkS]

I believe...

...that's why it's in Odds and Sods

[Uk_Gadget]

No Comments

If it starts to rain, will he have a water butt?

[Pete 2]

The lengths some people will go, to be disgusted

You'd almost think they enjoyed it.

Painters and decorators across the land know that Screwfix (amongst others) supply disposable coveralls in a nice, tasteful and clearly not-mistakable-for-being-naked white. Maybe it's time they introduced various skin-toned colours to the range?

Then all the Mr. or Mrs. Spriggs' of the country can don them for a wander around their garden, safe in the knowledge that when the cops come a'knockin' they have plausible deniability.

[g e]

Reminds me of

The Spitting Image puppet of Mary Whitehouse... she'd bitch about some tv prog she'd just watched in its entirety, obvious being too stupid to realise she had a choice of other crap to watch and indeed an OFF button as well as change-channel buttons

All thing bright & beautiful...

... the purple-headed mountain

[Anonymous Coward]

I should make a joke...

... but instead I am going to rail against daily mail reading, curtain twitching, busy body, nosy fecking neighbours! All too easy to believe that the charges included indecent exposure whilst walking around his bedroom.

[laird cummings]

"All too easy..."

It's happened over here. A few years back a couple were prosecuted AND convicted for public indecency for having sex in a room tro-rooms removed from the outer wall in their own home. Why? 'Cause the sneaky-peeper neighbor who just happened to be staring into their window could see them *reflected* in a door-hung mirror opened to an unfortunate angle.

Too bad the long-lensed shutterbugs in this particular case did have't their heads explode from sheer hypocritical outrage overload. Of course, then Mr. Nudist would be prosecuted for murder, and terrorism too, likely.

[Chris Miller]

Is this the world's oldest joke?

Old Maid: Help me officer, there's a naked man outside my bedroom.

Police Officer: I'm sorry madam, I can't see anyone.

Old Maid: Not from there, but if you climb on the wardrobe and look through these binoculars ...

[Code Monkey]

Or to turn it around...

I was naked in my hotel room and the maid walked in. Eventually.

Mine's the flasher's mack

[neb]

lucky...

...there wasn't a bicycle there then

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1567410/Man-who-had-sex-with-bike-in-court.html

[Grivas Bo Diddly Harm]

Flasher's Mac???

Ah - THERE'S the IT angle!

Calm down, dear, calm down!

[Jimboom]

Trim the bushes

Can't please everyone. On the one hand you got neighbours being peeping toms to catch a glimpse and on the other ( the side you didn't hear) you got neighbours telling you to trim the bushes so they can see the show too. ;-)

Paris.. cause she knows how to put on a good show.

[Anonymous Coward]

and ...

... how to trim her bush.

[Marky W]

Health and safety nightmare

Pruning shears, rose thorns, nettles, bumble bees...

Ouch.

[laird cummings]

Title thingy goes here

Might be a medal in it, for gardening above and beyond, in imminent danger.

[Matt.Smart]

I'll get my coat.

I hear there's been a streak of this sort of thing at the moment.

[thefutureboy]

Quote:

"You don't look like your average horti-f***ing-culturist!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there's a health'n'safety issue here

which would be far greater bounds for legal action

[fishman]

porn

Since the neighbors took pictures of him, can they be prosecuted for making pornography?

[The Beer Monster]

porn?

Only if he's got at least a semi.

It's ok if it's a terraced house, bungalow or bedsit...

[Richard Jukes]

Counter Sue!

Counter sue them for being a peeping tom! Honestly what is the world coming to, if a chap wants to walk around naked in his own garden then he bloody well can in my eyes, wont someone think of the children? If men cannot walk around naked in their own gardens (and be accompanied by women), it may well mean one less child on this planet...

[Elmer Phud]

Oh, FFS!

He's 62, not a rampant 25 year old waving his engorged hampton about and using it a a dibber for his spuds.

Move along now, nothing to see.

[NogginTheNog]

That might be WHY they complained?

Not quite as appealing a sight perhaps?

[Code Monkey]

Engorged hampton

I've no idea what an engorged hampton is and will just have to (try not to) imagine until I can get off the work network to Google it. Meanwhile, please send a fresh keyboard to my office forthwith.

[Intractable Potsherd]

@Code Monkey...

It is Cockney (or mockney) rhyming slang: Hampton Wick=pr ... ahhh you can fill the rest in yourself. (Hampton Wick is a bit of London - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hampton_Wick, though why it was chosen for this usage, I don't know).

[Code Monkey]

@Intractable Potsherd

Thank you. Every day's a school day

[poohbear]

Obviously (yes, this is the missing IT angle: logic.)

It's quite clear what this lawsuit is really about. Mr Nosy Neighbour is upset that Mr Sprigg is better endowed than he, and his wife has found a new photographic hobby dedicated to one subject (or should that be, One Member), and the only way to save face (or should that be Head) is to sue ...

[Purlieu]

Countersuit / Stiffy

Sprigg should instigate a countersuit for harassment and 'peeping tom' activity, are these perverts allowed to spy on whomever they choose ?

Also please check up the 'rules' for indecent exposure - I think you'll find that unless he had a stiffy it's only disturbance of the peace.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well

He was initially arrested for exposure (sex offences act 2003) but was subsequently charged with outraging public decency.

To prove exposure they have to show intent to cause alarm or distress.

With outraging public decency they do not have to show any intent: they only have to state that IF he had been seen it MAY have caused outrage IF someone had seen him. He does not have to be seen at all for outraging public decency !

[laird cummings]

Right then!

Time to lock up the entire nation - I KNOW each and every one of you has had some nasty thought or done something right awful at some point... Quite sure you're all the most offensive lot ever.

Excepting my lot, of course.

[Denarius]

adding my 2p worth

The right to be "shocked, absolutely shocked" is now a mandatory part of the childish remnants of post-western culture.

No grownups allowed, because that would mean minding your own business, allowing that others may differ and not being distressed that some people dont like you. Still, one would think that pruning should be done with basic protective clothing, nudist or not. Would a nudist arc weld? As for bootnotes, sock it to em! Mines the one with the pruning saw rips in the front..

[Malcolm Boura 2]

Wrong law

We at British Naturism have been trying to find out what on Earth is going on. The information obtained so far is confusing and contradictory with the police giving one impression of the circumstances and the newspaper reports of what is said in court a rather different one.

One thins is clear. He is charged under s.5 Public Order Act 1986, not Outraging Public Decency.

I have been handling such incidents for BN for nearly 5 years and in that time, as far as we know, there has not even been an attempt to prosecute for garden Naturism. We have had to challenge the police over it on a number of occasions but always succesfully. We have on file several statements from various police forces that in the circumstances described in the news reports there is no offense committed. Indeed we have even had police forces contacting us as a courtesy to tell us that a complaint had been made but that in their opinion no crime had been committed. A complaining neighbour has been interviewed under caution with a view to prosecution for harasment.

There is far too much law in this country that is so vague that it is wide open to abuse by the prejudiced.

[Cazzo Enorme]

Oh hell

Only this morning I was standing on my patio having that first cup of coffee to set off the detonators prior to retiring bogwards with a copy of Autotrader, when I noticed my neighbour watching me from an upstairs window. Problem is, I was starkers, and worse still, enjoying a leisurely scratch of the groinal garden with my free hand.

I'll await a knock on the door from plod when I get back home then.

[Pete 2]

While waiting for the knock

I'd spend a bit of time checking YouTube, too

[foo_bar_baz]

What do you expect

... if you live up to your user name? :P

[LuMan]

Er..

Was he working his ho at the time??

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, interesting!

Well done el Reg!

This is just the thing to bring charm and vigour to a Monday morning at work in what appears to be a rare UK event (heatwave).

Voted highly for the topic.

I am also minded about a book "The principles of personal hygiene" by Willie Wacks and Bol Grees with contributions by Fanny Phat and Iva (Fishdocks) Smelliwan.

[disgruntled yank]

How classical!

From Hawthorne's <i>The Blithedale Romance</i>, the New England intelligentsia setting out to farm collectively:

So we ... took to honest homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan

recommended, I think, by Virgil,--"Ara nudus; sere nudus, "--which as Silas Foster remarked, when I translated the maxim, would be apt to astonish the women-folks.

But Virgil lived in a warmer climate, didn't he?

As a young man I worked a couple of summers with men of 60 or so who had worked outdoors all their lives, bringing northern European coloration to the sun of the US high plains. That was enough to persuade me that there are body parts I really don't care to tan.

[Tony Green]

Out of character for the Daily Hate

No immigrants / muslims / other-minorities to blame it on.

[Big Al]

It's the old joke, isn't it?

If you're old, male and nude in your garden, and a neighbour sees you, you're a flasher.

If you're young, female and nude in your garden, and a neighbour sees you, they're a peeping Tom.

Mine's the dirty mac.

[Graham Marsden]

Quoting from the Sexual Offences Act 2003:

66 Exposure

(1)A person commits an offence if—

(a)he intentionally exposes his genitals, and

(b)he intends that someone will see them and be caused alarm or distress.

Now unless the gardener a) knew that the neighbours were watching (with a telephoto lens from 150m away!) and was deliberately waving his willy at them, I don't really think that there's a case to answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

ISTR

there's another clause which effectively removes the "intent" bit. It was slipped in (no pun intended) by the nuLab stasi as a means of not having to argue over what was "intended". There was some debate in the legal community at the time, as it would have effectively meant a woman (because men aren't victims) who climbed a fence, and shinned a drainpipe, and happened to see a naked man would be able to prosecute him for indecent exposure.

[Malcolm Boura 2]

Is this correct?

Please cite. We at British Naturism are not aware of anything like that. The word "reckless" was removed so it could be that somebody has got that back to front.

[Andus McCoatover]

Sexist, or what!

Perp referred in SOA. "he intentionally exposes his genitals". Always 'he'. Searched using (sp)she(sp) in case there was a proviso, but no

Sect. 2: "(1)A person (A) commits an offence if—(a)he intentionally penetrates the vagina or anus of another person (B) with a part of his body or anything else,."

Women are capable of this. Ask Rose West.

Wonder if this would be grounds for appeal? Human Rights or something...

[The Beer Monster]

IANAL, but...

In law, doesn't a reference to the singular include the plural and a reference to the male include the female?

[Malcolm Boura 2]

Gender not relevant

The male pronown includes the female. It applies equally to both males and females.

[Malcolm Boura 2]

Not what he is charged with.

He was arrested for that offense but then they realised that they had got the law wrong, very common where nudity is concerned, but then charged him with a public order offense. s.5 Public Order Act 1986 can be summarised as "If we don't like it then you are a criminal".

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Okey dokey

To the gentlemen's neighbours...

JUST F**K OFF AND GET A F**KING LIFE YOU SAD TOSSPOTS!

Sure if there are some kids next door under a certain age and the parents don't really want them getting an eye-full of todger, fair enough, but I assume this guy has enough sense being a practising (?) nudist to know the limits.

Sick and tired of these shitty stupid fecking laws that can used to wreck people's lives for some small misunderstanding. Sounds more like his neighbours are after and argument and finally got one.

[JohnG]

January 1-31 this year?

From the Daily Mail article: "The nudist pleaded not guilty to three charges of outraging public decency dates between January 1-31 this year, between March 1-15 and finally on March 20."

It was still damn cold in January. He must be a very keen gardener to be out in the buff in the snow and his neighbours must have a very powerful telescope to be able to discern his jiggly bits at 100m in January.

[Anonymous Coward]

If he goes before the Beak...

Will he get the Bums Rush?

[Mystic Megabyte]

Religous freedom?

I'm a Buddhist in the winter but a Nudist in the summer.

Mines the coat with the pockets cut out..

[Cameron Colley]

It really is sad to live in a country like this.

It's pretty fucking pathetic that in a supposed "modern, democratic, enlightened" country that the law persecutes people for not happening to wear clothes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup

And nudity in a film garners a 15 cert where as someone getting gunned down manages to scrape by on a PG.

[Muckminded]

Hubble hubble

62 years old, and still just a Sprigg. If he's anything like a saguaro cactus, he's only gained one inch every ten years, so very little crime to detect.

[Andus McCoatover]

Nude gardener....

Maybe the neighbours should be grateful he wasn't practicing some 'uphill gardening'.

[Purlieu]

re: He does not have to be seen at all for outraging public decency

If he's not seen at all, how can anyone know ?

e.g. tree, forest, falling, sound, etc

[Urh]

I don't get it either...

I was also perplexed by the seemingly paradoxical definition of "outraging public decency" - how can it be a public outrage if it doesn't necessarily have to happen in public, or even be seen by members of the public?

I can't help but be reminded of Caroline Cartwright (the woman who got slapped with an ASBO for the "crime" of being noisy in bed). What happened to neighbours just talking to each other, and trying to resolve matters between themselves? Maybe I'm being a little idealistic, but a lot of nonsense like this could probably be resolved with a quiet, polite chat (possibly over tea and biscuits). But no. It seems that coppers and judges just haven't got enough work to do these days, so otherwise law-abiding folk like Mr Sprigg and Mrs Cartwright are being dragged in front of magistrates, and they're effectively pilloried as a result.

[Number6]

IT Angle?

I assume the angle of it was likely to be below the horizonal. If it was in the colder months then the neighbours must have had an impressive zoom lens to see anything.

[Albert Hall]

Neighbourly relations

I do hope we can trust the Reg to keep a watchful eye on this situation. As for this "practising" nudist, what's to practise? I mean really...

Other than keeping his hedges and fences to a suitable height, surely the best this put upon gent can do is to turn the other cheek?

[Anonymous Coward]

How nice to see Arse

...rather than ass.

Congratulations on the correct spelling :)

[kain preacher]

Second Crime

Were I live at the neighbors would of been done in for using a telephoto lens to spy into some one back yard and doing it from the second story.

[Asiren]

I would try, but...

Where to start??

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that......

a cucumber you are holding or are you pleased to see me !

Well he is green fingered.

I bet clearing nettles and brambles are a little hazardous.

[Public Decency]

Well...

...consider me outraged.

[Anteaus]

Unequal justice

"And nudity in a film garners a 15 cert where as someone getting gunned down manages to scrape by on a PG."

True. Not to mention that you can describe nailing a man to a plank of wood and leaving him out in the sun to die -or the rape of an entire tribe's womenfolk- to a five-year old, so long as it's out of a 'holy' book, but not out of 'Doom.'

Excuse me, as I can feel a smiting urge coming-on. Oh, I am soooo holy.

[Anonymous Coward]

But who cleans the cushions?

As once writ by Lar D Erssen (I am given to understand that the 'n' is silent): who cleans the cushions?