Kenneth Roy
Sir Fred and the naked rambler

Few figures in Scotland today arouse such passions as Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of RBS, and Stephen Gough, untitled and unclothed, the naked rambler. Sir Fred has started a new job as a 'senior adviser' (whatever that is) to another organisation disguised behind an acronym, a firm of architects known as RMJM. Mr Gough languishes in prison for again failing to do the decent thing. The two are roughly the same vulnerable age – just over 50 – when the prospect of chill mortality begins to send shudders up a man's spine – very chilly indeed in the case of the naked rambler. But they have something else in common: there appears to be a general feeling that neither is fit to be let loose in the community.
     This consensus, if it is a consensus, needs to be challenged in the way that all consensus needs to be challenged.
     The case of Mr Gough is the more perplexing. Since he set off on his original ramble from Land's End to John O'Groats in 2003, he has been arrested at least 20 times – although no one seems to know exactly how often – usually when walking alone, although sometimes in the company of his girlfriend Melanie. It would be unfair to accuse him of being completely naked. He invariably wears a hat. Also, he carries a rucksack containing essential provisions for his journey; by essential, we are not talking here of a fresh pair of pants. So, strictly speaking, Mr Gough is partially covered – but not enough for Mrs Angiolini and her eagle-eyed chums at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
     Although the police are almost invisible, choosing sensibly to remain in their patrol cars during the severe weather, they tend miraculously to re-appear for the ritual sightings of the naked rambler. The procedure is now familiar: arrest, prosecution, appearance in court (with or without the hat? I'm not sure), imprisonment, release, immediate re-arrest for breach of the peace. It is not clear which peace he is breaching, there being so very little peace in modern life.
     The court awaits, not for the first time, reports on the prisoner's psychiatric condition; it may not be long before Mr Gough is transferred to the care of those charming people, the members of the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland. Alternatively, according to the sheriff hearing the present case, he could remain in prison until he dies or until he agrees to pull his trousers on – whichever extreme eventuality occurs first.
     During his frequent detentions, Mr Gough has to be segregated from the rest of the prison population. Even in an environment in which there is no privacy, where nakedness is commonplace among men sharing cells, dormitories and showers, a special revulsion is felt for someone who chooses nudity as a way of life. So if the naked rambler does indeed spend the rest of his life in prison, it will be in the solitary confinement usually reserved for sex offenders. Ostracised by his fellow prisoners, he has also been shunned by the Central Council for British Naturism and by a more radical nudist group, both of whom see Mr Gough as an attention seeker, a mere exhibitionist, an egoist. He seems to have no friends in the world apart from Melanie, who also wears a hat.
     'He must be mad,' all rational people will observe. Perhaps he is. But his madness seems to do no particular harm. It is not in the same category of madness as, for example, that of habitual dangerous drivers, who endanger their own lives and the lives of others, yet who go on driving dangerously until they are caught, if they are ever caught. Even then, very few are locked up for the rest of their lives. They are released after a few years, perhaps only months, and, so long as they are wearing clothes, will escape the further attention of Mrs Angiolini and the faintly menacing chaps in the patrol cars. In Scotland, it seems, only the naked rambler faces actual life imprisonment.
     The case of Sir Fred is more straightforward. Here is a man who knows how to wear clothes. The only time I met him, I was struck by his smart suit, his generally suave appearance. I confidently predict that Sir Fred will never be arrested for that particular breach of the peace called nakedness. But there is another peace he has breached – the peace of mind of investors in his bank, of employees of the bank, of all those millions of others affected indirectly by the banking collapse. After all that has happened, and for which he has been partially responsible, should Sir Fred – the 'disgraced banker' as he is now universally known – keep himself in voluntary solitary confinement, straying from home only for the occasional health-giving but fully clothed ramble? Sir Fred, like Mr Gough, has few supporters. The Central Council for British Naturism may not have formally disowned him, but just about everybody else has.
     Yet, courageously, he has chosen to re-emerge metaphorically naked into civilised society. He has become a sort of architect. A reader tells me that his appointment may have been an act of friendship on the part of Sir Fraser Morrison, the head of the firm. But, then, all of us need friends in our hour of need. Even Mr Gough has his Melanie. Sir Fraser may, so to speak, be Fred Goodwin's Melanie. I once likened Sir Fred in a not unfriendly way to Ibsen's master builder, for whom there was no greater ambition than to build castles in the air. In the end, he fell. Sir Fred, too, fell; not, however, to his death. He has survived to join an architectural practice. There is a certain irony there. It is richly comic.
     There is no humanity in consigning anyone to the permanent status of outcast. Now that the worst of the weather is behind us, it is time to release Mr Gough and allow him to resume the long trek to John O'Groats, a place no one in his right mind would wish to visit; a fitting destination, then, for the naked rambler. Sir Fred also must be given his chance of rehabilitation. He has taken so much out of the British economy; we should welcome his offer to give just a little back.