Stark Naked: A Short History of Streaking

If there's one thing that's guaranteed to liven up any dull sporting event, it's a member of the crowd putting on their birthday suit and sprinting across the field of play, pursued by a group of security guards. Streaking, as it's affectionately known, is the art of running around a sports ground completely naked. And Australia has played a special role in its short but amusing history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
The year is nineteen seventy four. We're in the town
of Twickenham, thirty minutes southwest of London, and England are
taking on France in a classic rugby matchup. It's a
pretty cold day, but the crowd numbers are still more
than fifty thousand. As far as everybody knows, this is
going to be a regular game. Everybody that is, except
for one Michael O'Brien, who's about to change the face

(00:24):
and buttocks of sport forever. Hey, I'm Tony Armstrong. Welcome
to the Poolroom, where we celebrate the winners, losers and
the weird stuff between. Today on the show, we're stripping
back the layers on one of sport's most enduring traditions.

(00:50):
All right, let's get back to Twickenham. Halftime arrives and
this bloke shows up on the field. But he's not
a player and he's not a ref. This guy is
surprising for a whole different reason. He's stark naked and
he's running at full belt with his junk swinging. This,
my friends, is Michael O'Brien, the first person to streak

(01:13):
at a sporting match. He and a mate had a
ten pound bet that the practice of stripping down in
front of a crowd would catch on in Britain. He
copped a ten pound fine, so I guess it was
like a net zero bet for old Mike, and our
famous photo captures him as a slim, white, long haired
guy with a policeman's hat covering his genitalia. The English

(01:34):
are a private people, after all, and while streaking at
sporting events began in England, Michael was, of course in
the tradition of being a nob at a sporting match
an Aussie. In two thousand and six, he appeared on
Where Are They Now to confess that streaking is not
that cool actually, but as a country we've clung to
it like it's a sausage in supermarket bread. Let's look

(01:56):
back at some of the highlights. Will begin back in England,
this time at Lord's where the home side were battling
Australia for the Ashes. A woman by the name of
Sheila Nichols rushed the field and, as if being Starkers
wasn't enough, did cartwheels in front of the legendary Iam Botham,
and believe it or not, Sheila went on to release

(02:16):
several critically acclaimed solo albums an early kind of influencer.
Maybe the seventies was a beautiful time for streaking, but
Greg Chappel's patience had run pretty short. In nineteen seventy seven,
in the second Test against New Zealand, cheers erupted from

(02:38):
the crowd in a game that threatened to have more
people with clothes off than on. Yet another nude man
was charging towards the wicket, the third streaker of the match.
A frustrated Greg Chapel grabbed him by the arm, lifted
his bat and smacked that bare bum until the streaker
fled from whence he came. Cricket did a track more

(03:00):
than its fair share. A One Day International against India
at the Gabba copped a strip tease when a streaker
charged at Andrew Simon's who was at the crease. The
late all rounder, cool and collected as ever, simply dropped
the shoulder and sent the intruder to the ground. The
incident also delivered some of the most beautiful commentary of
all time. Elector streaker. We don't know at the moment

(03:22):
if it's a boy or girl streaker. It was a
boy streaker for the record. While the nineteen eighty nine
VFL Grand Final is famous for having a Norm Smith
medallist on the losing side, Gary Ablett Sena. It was
also the chosen stage for a person dressed as Batwoman
to make an appearance. I say dressed like She definitely

(03:45):
wore a mask and acape and superhero boots, but little
else was left to the imagination. Finally, although not strictly
a streaker by definition, f ing yard animals are technically naked,
and so we must mention the pig at fall forward.

(04:06):
During a Swans verse Saints match in nineteen ninety three,
a porker was released on the flank and promptly went
for a run through the forward fifty Apparently, according to
an anonymous source after the game, many players and even
officials were in on the stunt, smuggling the animals through
the media entrance to release it onto the ground during
the second quarter. Oh there's a pig on the ground.

(04:29):
There is a pig at full forward, named after footy
great Tony Plugger Lockett. It was designed to be a
dig at the then Saints player, but he was injured
and wasn't even at the ground. The Porky Plugger was
reportedly purchased by a corporate box attendee and the money
donated to charity, and surely it had a happy ending,
living out its long life on a farm. No further

(04:52):
questions please. Streaking as a pastime may have been dampened
by ground security and bands on storming the field, but
Michael O'Brien's legacy will never truly end. In twenty twenty two,
a Gold Coast man sporting an impressive mullet and slightly
less impressive glutes emerged from a nearby lawn bowls club.

(05:12):
He bolted down the length of a suburban soccer match
in his birthday suit, sledging the opposition side as he
went tradition, Where do we be without it? The pool

(05:38):
room is an iHeart production. I'm Tony Armstrong. Thanks for
hanging around.