(651)  RAMBLING ON

The Naked Rambler, Stephen Gough, continues to make intermittent but unclad appearances in public and in the press.  As he completes successive prison sentences at Saughton prison in Edinburgh, he attempts to leave without clothes, is then rearrested by waiting police, charged with a further breach of the peace and haled back to court (from whence, in general, back to Saughton).  The pattern was however broken on 10 April 2007 when Sheriff Isobel Poole found there was insufficient evidence that the public had been placed in a state of fear and alarm by the Rambler’s nudity in the prison car park, and discharged him.  Gough celebrated freedom with a naked dash from the Edinburgh Sheriff Court building in Chambers Street to the nearby Grassmarket, where he was rearrested and charged once more.  This episode led to a further conviction on 10 May for breach of the peace (more people in the Grassmarket by day than in an early morning Saughton prison car park, of course), with a concomitant prison sentence, despite a defence that no-one had provided him with any clothes after his unexpected release.  A further attempt to depart Saughton in the buff on 25 May renewed the old pattern of events, and on 26 June the Rambler was sentenced to a further 60 days inside, plus 14 days outstanding from his previous sentence.  Meanwhile, although Scots Law News understands that Gough’s appeal against previous convictions has been heard, there is no sign of any judgement from the Court of Criminal Appeal (which, according to the not very up-to-date Naked Rambler website, consisted of five judges).