The Chase | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

I've never been a criminal of sorts you know I've just um I've found a way to challenge law if
you like this is Mark Roberts you may never have heard of him but his name and his face
are well known to law enforcement all over England before every major event they have a big speech about what to
look out for and I come up every single time a big picture of me on screen everyone's given a picture of me to look
out for me you know I I'm looking at your Wikipedia page right now I don't know I I don't know who wrote that it
certainly wasn't me and a lot of it's not true but there is this naked picture of you
yeah oh that's definitely me then Mark Roberts lives in Liverpool he's a 54 year old house painter a
self-described sports fanatic who likes a beer and who's traveled all over the world
can you list some of the sporting events you've done how long have we go I've done the rugby seven s in Hong Kong
um three times the Chinese FA Cup Final did the London Marathon I came second in
the London Marathon actually but I only did the last 200 meters behind the winner the Champions League football
final which is the one next to the World Cup scored a goal in there he he's done
Wimbledon twice the running of the bulls in Pamplona golf horse racing swimming weather reports a Mr Universe contest
dog shows he's done the Olympics summer and winter he was just in South Korea back in 2006 Mark went to the Winter
Olympics in Italy to the curling competition curling is that sport where athletes slide Stones across the ice and
use brooms to control their speed so I looked at the whole thing I thought well they're clean in the ice so I'll go
on with a mop and I had to knock it not a handkerchief on my head clothes pegs in me so I'm
going on as a cleaner Marigold gloves on my hands and a big rubber chicken stuck
to um little thread downstairs how many times have you done this how many times have you
streaked well up to up to today it's 565 streaks um in 23 countries you know if if you've
got a good act you take it on tour yeah I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music]
streak was an awesome in 1993. he was in a bar with friends and saw a news story
about a woman who had streaked Mark wasn't impressed he said I could do that I just said to anyone can streak so the
old the ball was next to me he said okay big mouth you streak tomorrow in the final
I said yes because it was rotten drunk Mark went home and passed out and before he knew it his friends were banging on
his door ready to take him to the rugby match he had no memory of what he'd promised
to do but he did have a horrible hangover I said just give me a beer so I two two three beers I went right let's
get this over and doing it so I've walked right down the main stand took my clothes off at the All Blacks the best
team in the world at the time were playing South Africa so I've ran on totally naked ran backwards way to the
stones as if to say okay I've done it but as a 10 round I saw the ball and something in my head just said grab that
so I've run over picked the ball up around the whole length of the field and scored a try a touchdown in that exact
moment in Hong Kong Mark had a breakthrough he knew exactly what he had to do with the rest of his life
as I've turned around the whole stadium 65 000 people all Rose the defeat started screaming and cheering I
literally felt the energy from everybody all at once it was like open the door of
a sauna and the heated tube it literally felt like that and I have got a lovely body you know I'm not well built
downstairs or anything I'm just a normal guy for everyone loved it it went over so well that he couldn't wait to do it
again two days later at a different Stadium a soccer game between Hong Kong and South China that first time he was
too hungover to be nervous but the second time he was so excited he could barely stay in his seat I've got to look
normal because I can't look out of place I just join him with all the rest of the
supporters and the crowd but inside I am all over the place my heart's going crazy my stomach's chaining my mind's
checking out every single possibility and all the time I'm looking at the police and security waiting to get a
little point where they can go on and virtually every single time we've done it has worked absolutely perfect
it's worked perfectly except for all the times he's been arrested and he's been arrested a lot for outraging public
decency Criminal Trespass public nuisance breach of the peace and causing quote alarm and distress to the public
are you naked during the arrest process mostly well um usually yep what does it feel like
right before you're about to take your clothes off when you're uh I mean you do quickly do you like rip the clothes off
yeah I've got I've got Velcro clothes specially made oh yeah so they can come off in a second oh yeah yeah I'm a
professional Mark has these special outfits made from by seamstress in Liverpool he says she
knows what they're for and that she's quote cool about it his usual process is to get down on the
fields with his outfit on and then rip it off and take off running so the the police go over and pick up
your clothes off the field and kind of jog them over to you yeah yeah do you ever think it's kind of mean to
make a police officer chase down your pants and deliver them back um no not really as long as he's
laughing when he hands them back to me you know um and that's what I've had with the
police all the time he did tell us about one time in Madrid when the police weren't laughing they picked up his
clothes and refused to give them back ripped on me clothes off on the pitch got chased by seven policemen taken
taken away putting a police station till 1 30 in the morning I'm stuck naked and
the police said okay you go that's my clothes no clothes no clothes you go I thought this is a wind-up so I said
okay I've walked out the police station Stark naked and I've started walking up the road waiting for the police to call
me back but you didn't mark went back into the police station and said okay very funny now give me my clothes and
they eventually told him that they didn't even have them they'd thrown them into the crowd along with his passport
his phone his ATM card everything he was stuck in the middle of Madrid naked often law enforcement themselves are
confused about what the law is and a good example of that is a guy named John Brennan who like many of us was
frustrated going through airport security and being probed and examined by TSA this is Joanna Grossman a
professor at SMU law school who's written about nudity in the law and they were getting more and more invasive and
he in protest just stripped naked and stood there in the Portland airport completely unclothed saying basically
okay now you can see everything I have nothing to hide and he was arrested and turned out that in fact he hadn't done
anything wrong in addition to having a very sympathetic story because we could sort of all
imagine getting mad enough that maybe we would do that it in that moment in time
but being simply nude was not actually a violation of the relevant Law And even if it had been it the court looked at it
and said look he's protesting that you can use nudity just like you can use speech or protest in other forms to
protest the government and that what he was really doing was protesting government surveillance and the
increasing invasion of privacy so let's say that you are in a jurisdiction where
nudity is illegal why is it illegal nudity is illegal because of concerns about public
sensibilities affront provocation it's not about simply The Shame of the human body although that of
course pervades our culture in lots of different ways if you look at the structure of nudity law particularly
what is and isn't illegal you get a different sense first of all depending on gender so when you look at laws that
affect nudity by women what you really see is a concern about enticement right we worry about women being naked or
being topless because we worry that people will be driven to distraction or worse when you think about men and the
naked male body and you look at our culture and legal history when we're worried about men we're not worried
about people being too distracted or too enticed by the sight of the male body what we're worried about is that it's
threatening now that might end up in a law that looks very similar right they might say nobody can show their genitals
for example but we really have very different concerns for men versus women so if you were to take a do a 50-state
survey and say you know what is the law of public nudity in the United States you would find a range of approaches but
as a general matter it's indecent exposure laws are the type of law that will come into play if you took another
step down the Spectrum the more common law you would find would be an indecent exposure law that prohibits nudity only
if there's something lewd about it and if you're in a jurisdiction in which simple nudity is a kind of indecent
exposure right one of those stricter States then the question is who the prosecutor is or who the police are
because they're the ones that are making determinations and exercising discretion
to say I am going to try to bring the law to bear on this situation or I'm not so I think there's a lot of points of
discretion and then maybe you even get to a jury and the jury gets to say you know oh come on it's streaking it's
nothing you know we did Mark's story in front of a live audience all across the country and as part of
the schtick at the end we had someone streak across the stage and it's always amazing
to me that for some reason a Streaker seems to turn everyone into a nine-year-old boy like everyone in the
audience no one is acting like an adult when they see a Streaker you are acting just like a child something happens to
us when we see a Streaker most of the time yes I think for most people who see it it's sort of interesting mostly
because you see a person in a place they're not supposed to be right acting in a way that they're not supposed to
act in that context right not because it's so shocking to ever see a naked body right you might expect to see that
in a gym locker room but to have somebody streaking across a sporting event or uh you know something like the
Oscars it's you know jarring and right and I think that's what the streakers if you look at sort of the history of
streakers what they get out of it right it's like jumping off you know jumping out of an airplane it's fun and exciting
and it's an adrenaline Rock because you surprise people and you know catch them off guard
in the beginning when charges were brought against Mark he would plead guilty no point denying something sixty
thousand people and a lot of Television cameras saw but at a certain point he realized that he wasn't going to plead
guilty anymore not because he didn't break the law but because he thinks the law is wrong I know the law better than
my lawyer nowadays I said no this is wrong everybody is laughing and joking and cheering that's no one's harassed
alarm or distressed so I've had eight trials out of one six still he's banned for most sporting events in the UK
wimbledon's lawyers write him letters begging him to please just stay home when British teams play abroad Mark says
he has to surrender his passport at the police station when the game is over he can go pick it up and go back to normal
life what's the biggest sporting event you ever pulled off that's got to be the Super Bowl
in two thousand four Mark streaked Super Bowl 38 in Houston he knew this would be
the hardest event yet the security is very tight and Mark didn't know I was going to get from his seat onto the
field without being stopped so I thought I'll go out as a referee he got his seamstress to make him a velcro referees
uniform and put his real clothes on over that but he wasn't expecting a head to toe pat down by security
when he saw security frisking people he thought oh no this will never work so I've walked up put my arms out the guys
felt along my arms down down me back on the inside of my legs he said what's this man
and the first thing I could think of was I've got a skin disorder I need to be able to get to my legs put the cream on
quickly that's why you're wearing the velcro yeah that's why I'm wearing the velcro
you know and he went okay man Lifted Me top up and saw the referee's uniform he said what's that man I said that's my
lucky uniform I went into every game he said okay fair enough and you go the New
England Patriots were playing the Carolina Panthers Mark waited until the second half and then he took off his
first layer of clothes now I'm a referee have dropped down the wall through all the people around the field excuse me
man excuse me man people opened up and I've got right to the center of the field just before the guys kicking the
ball for the third quarter kickoff whoa and the guy to play face what's up ref man I swear nothing can switch
ripped my clothes off and started river dancing wasn't broadcast in the United States
CBS turned their cameras away but here's the audio from a Danish TV crew [Applause]
[Music] I started [Music] oh the crowd got onto it straight away but all the players are going what's the
referee doing man you thought the referees having to break down what's the referee do man some I'm dancing around
in circles around the ball and look at all the police total confusion and I'm dancing around looking at all
the police total confusion I was on there for nearly a minute Phoebe doing all these silly dances and to be honest
I'm glad they came after me because I've run out of moves Wendy face eventually come after me here's the chase so I'm
going and the noise level in the crowd was unbelievable when the first went on and when the chase started they went
absolutely crazy I'm going wow fine Super Bowl [Applause] that's awesome [Music]
[Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] ruling I don't want to get caught it's obvious but one of the linebackers came
running in from the side and flattened me and I've got about 20 cops on top of me I've got me face pushed in the grass
as I'm getting handcuffed and all I could think of I did it did the Super Bowl man
he was arrested and charged with criminal trespass when the jury went to deliberate Mark
asked someone in the courtroom how they thought it went and they said if no one looks at you when the jury comes back
then you know it's bad the jurors came back in and no one looked Mark in the eye
it was a guilty verdict but in the end his sentence was only a thousand dollar fine
wow man so I couldn't stop thanking all the jurors and the judge me Mom Simon Cowell anybody we could think of was
we're getting thanked that day he could cover that thousand dollar fine no problem
companies pay millions of dollars to get coveted commercial spots in the Super Bowl and one company paid Mark to write
their name on his body they paid for his tickets and in the end his legal fees you may not remember mark from this game
but you probably do remember something else this was the same Super Bowl where for
not even a second the world saw part of Janet Jackson's chest Janet Jackson was apparently so
offensive that more than 500 000 people filed complaints with the FCC the FCC chairman called it a crass and
deplorable stunt he said our nation's children parents and citizens deserve better
networks immediately took the video down but a programmer at PayPal is determined
to find that video online and he couldn't so he and his friends built a new site
so that people could easily upload and share videos he called it YouTube [Music]
it's true that when you watch videos of Mark everyone does seem to be laughing and smiling one time the king of Spain
stood up in his box and cheered and clapped for Mark he says people like it because he sticks
to a rigid code don't interrupt the game because you can change the outcome and be prepared to spend a few hours maybe
even an evening in a police cell and have a good lawyer handy and don't eat spicy food the night before I asked him
why he does this he said that he likes to make people laugh which I've always thought is kind of a
cop-out answer Everyone likes to make people laugh but we don't all go around taking our
clothes off it's it's almost unbelievable liberating thing you could do I think everybody should try it at least once I
think I would rather die than be naked in a stadium for 65 000 people I think I would just have a heart attack I
wouldn't even get the chance to run because I just fall down dead well if anybody that told me I'd have been
streaking you know years ago because I was 28 years old when his first did it and I said you're joking there's not a
chance in hell since that first streak more than 25 years ago Mark's broken fingers and toes he's broken four of his
ribs his children have begged him to stop but I always said the dead dare get food
is the day I'll stop and I don't think that's ever going to happen um so I've slowed down a hell of a lot
who knows you know I might be the first pensioner to streak at the bingo or something you know
[Music] summer plans that you'd like to tell anyone anyone about what are you trying
to make me safe I think we'll be speaking again soon okay oh boy oh boy okay okay bye-bye
cheers take care [Music] criminal is produced by Lauren Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob
Byers matild erfolino is our intern Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of
Criminal you can see them at thisiscriminal.com we're on Facebook and Twitter at criminal show Criminal is
recorded in the studios of North Carolina public radio wunc we're a proud member of radiotopia
from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around special thanks to adserc for providing
their ad serving platform to radiotopia I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music]

Mark Roberts has attended almost every major sporting event in the world. And he’s been escorted off the field almost every time.

Music in the episode “Vanagon” by Podington Bear “These Fair Hands” by Nick Jaina “Infrastructure” by Scott Holmes “Sylvestor” by Blue Dot Sessions “Two in the Back” by Blue Dot Sessions “Marquetry” by Blue Dot Sessions “The Molerat” by Blue Dot Sessions “Sunday Lights” by Blue Dot Sessions “PolyCoat” by Blue Dot Sessions

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode 94 originally published 7/6/2018 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-94-the-chase-7-5-2018

Brief Summary

Mark Roberts shares his streaking adventures at major events and the legal challenges he faces.

Key points

Mark Roberts: The Streaker. Mark Roberts, a self-described sports fanatic, has streaked at major events worldwide, including the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl Streak. Mark streaked during Super Bowl 38, creating chaos and laughter among the crowd.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just said to anyone can streak.

Mark's initial reaction to a news story about a streaker.

2:51WatchJan 13, 2023

Tension

45/ 100Some tension

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