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I've never been a criminal of sorts you know I've just um I've found a way to challenge law if
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you like this is Mark Roberts you may never have heard of him but his name and his face
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are well known to law enforcement all over England before every major event they have a big speech about what to
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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
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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
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certainly wasn't me and a lot of it's not true but there is this naked picture of you
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yeah oh that's definitely me then Mark Roberts lives in Liverpool he's a 54 year old house painter a
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self-described sports fanatic who likes a beer and who's traveled all over the world
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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
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um three times the Chinese FA Cup Final did the London Marathon I came second in
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the London Marathon actually but I only did the last 200 meters behind the winner the Champions League football
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final which is the one next to the World Cup scored a goal in there he he's done
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Wimbledon twice the running of the bulls in Pamplona golf horse racing swimming weather reports a Mr Universe contest
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dog shows he's done the Olympics summer and winter he was just in South Korea back in 2006 Mark went to the Winter
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Olympics in Italy to the curling competition curling is that sport where athletes slide Stones across the ice and
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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
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on with a mop and I had to knock it not a handkerchief on my head clothes pegs in me so I'm
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going on as a cleaner Marigold gloves on my hands and a big rubber chicken stuck
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to um little thread downstairs how many times have you done this how many times have you
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streaked well up to up to today it's 565 streaks um in 23 countries you know if if you've
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got a good act you take it on tour yeah I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music]
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streak was an awesome in 1993. he was in a bar with friends and saw a news story
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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
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old the ball was next to me he said okay big mouth you streak tomorrow in the final
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I said yes because it was rotten drunk Mark went home and passed out and before he knew it his friends were banging on
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his door ready to take him to the rugby match he had no memory of what he'd promised
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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
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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
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team in the world at the time were playing South Africa so I've ran on totally naked ran backwards way to the
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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
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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
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moment in Hong Kong Mark had a breakthrough he knew exactly what he had to do with the rest of his life
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as I've turned around the whole stadium 65 000 people all Rose the defeat started screaming and cheering I
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literally felt the energy from everybody all at once it was like open the door of
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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
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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
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again two days later at a different Stadium a soccer game between Hong Kong and South China that first time he was
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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
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normal because I can't look out of place I just join him with all the rest of the
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supporters and the crowd but inside I am all over the place my heart's going crazy my stomach's chaining my mind's
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checking out every single possibility and all the time I'm looking at the police and security waiting to get a
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little point where they can go on and virtually every single time we've done it has worked absolutely perfect
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it's worked perfectly except for all the times he's been arrested and he's been arrested a lot for outraging public
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decency Criminal Trespass public nuisance breach of the peace and causing quote alarm and distress to the public
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are you naked during the arrest process mostly well um usually yep what does it feel like
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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
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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
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professional Mark has these special outfits made from by seamstress in Liverpool he says she
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knows what they're for and that she's quote cool about it his usual process is to get down on the
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fields with his outfit on and then rip it off and take off running so the the police go over and pick up
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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
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make a police officer chase down your pants and deliver them back um no not really as long as he's
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laughing when he hands them back to me you know um and that's what I've had with the
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police all the time he did tell us about one time in Madrid when the police weren't laughing they picked up his
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clothes and refused to give them back ripped on me clothes off on the pitch got chased by seven policemen taken
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taken away putting a police station till 1 30 in the morning I'm stuck naked and
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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
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okay I've walked out the police station Stark naked and I've started walking up the road waiting for the police to call
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me back but you didn't mark went back into the police station and said okay very funny now give me my clothes and
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they eventually told him that they didn't even have them they'd thrown them into the crowd along with his passport
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his phone his ATM card everything he was stuck in the middle of Madrid naked often law enforcement themselves are
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confused about what the law is and a good example of that is a guy named John Brennan who like many of us was
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frustrated going through airport security and being probed and examined by TSA this is Joanna Grossman a
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professor at SMU law school who's written about nudity in the law and they were getting more and more invasive and
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he in protest just stripped naked and stood there in the Portland airport completely unclothed saying basically
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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
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anything wrong in addition to having a very sympathetic story because we could sort of all
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imagine getting mad enough that maybe we would do that it in that moment in time
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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
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and said look he's protesting that you can use nudity just like you can use speech or protest in other forms to
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protest the government and that what he was really doing was protesting government surveillance and the
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increasing invasion of privacy so let's say that you are in a jurisdiction where
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nudity is illegal why is it illegal nudity is illegal because of concerns about public
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sensibilities affront provocation it's not about simply The Shame of the human body although that of
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course pervades our culture in lots of different ways if you look at the structure of nudity law particularly
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what is and isn't illegal you get a different sense first of all depending on gender so when you look at laws that
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affect nudity by women what you really see is a concern about enticement right we worry about women being naked or
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being topless because we worry that people will be driven to distraction or worse when you think about men and the
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naked male body and you look at our culture and legal history when we're worried about men we're not worried
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about people being too distracted or too enticed by the sight of the male body what we're worried about is that it's
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threatening now that might end up in a law that looks very similar right they might say nobody can show their genitals
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for example but we really have very different concerns for men versus women so if you were to take a do a 50-state
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survey and say you know what is the law of public nudity in the United States you would find a range of approaches but
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as a general matter it's indecent exposure laws are the type of law that will come into play if you took another
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step down the Spectrum the more common law you would find would be an indecent exposure law that prohibits nudity only
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if there's something lewd about it and if you're in a jurisdiction in which simple nudity is a kind of indecent
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exposure right one of those stricter States then the question is who the prosecutor is or who the police are
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because they're the ones that are making determinations and exercising discretion
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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
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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
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nothing you know we did Mark's story in front of a live audience all across the country and as part of
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the schtick at the end we had someone streak across the stage and it's always amazing
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to me that for some reason a Streaker seems to turn everyone into a nine-year-old boy like everyone in the
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audience no one is acting like an adult when they see a Streaker you are acting just like a child something happens to
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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
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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
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act in that context right not because it's so shocking to ever see a naked body right you might expect to see that
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in a gym locker room but to have somebody streaking across a sporting event or uh you know something like the
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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
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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
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and it's an adrenaline Rock because you surprise people and you know catch them off guard
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in the beginning when charges were brought against Mark he would plead guilty no point denying something sixty
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thousand people and a lot of Television cameras saw but at a certain point he realized that he wasn't going to plead
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guilty anymore not because he didn't break the law but because he thinks the law is wrong I know the law better than
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my lawyer nowadays I said no this is wrong everybody is laughing and joking and cheering that's no one's harassed
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alarm or distressed so I've had eight trials out of one six still he's banned for most sporting events in the UK
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wimbledon's lawyers write him letters begging him to please just stay home when British teams play abroad Mark says
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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
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life what's the biggest sporting event you ever pulled off that's got to be the Super Bowl
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in two thousand four Mark streaked Super Bowl 38 in Houston he knew this would be
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the hardest event yet the security is very tight and Mark didn't know I was going to get from his seat onto the
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field without being stopped so I thought I'll go out as a referee he got his seamstress to make him a velcro referees
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uniform and put his real clothes on over that but he wasn't expecting a head to toe pat down by security
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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
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felt along my arms down down me back on the inside of my legs he said what's this man
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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
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quickly that's why you're wearing the velcro yeah that's why I'm wearing the velcro
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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
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lucky uniform I went into every game he said okay fair enough and you go the New
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England Patriots were playing the Carolina Panthers Mark waited until the second half and then he took off his
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first layer of clothes now I'm a referee have dropped down the wall through all the people around the field excuse me
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man excuse me man people opened up and I've got right to the center of the field just before the guys kicking the
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ball for the third quarter kickoff whoa and the guy to play face what's up ref man I swear nothing can switch
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ripped my clothes off and started river dancing wasn't broadcast in the United States
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CBS turned their cameras away but here's the audio from a Danish TV crew [Applause]
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[Music] I started [Music] oh the crowd got onto it straight away but all the players are going what's the
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referee doing man you thought the referees having to break down what's the referee do man some I'm dancing around
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in circles around the ball and look at all the police total confusion and I'm dancing around looking at all
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the police total confusion I was on there for nearly a minute Phoebe doing all these silly dances and to be honest
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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
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going and the noise level in the crowd was unbelievable when the first went on and when the chase started they went
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absolutely crazy I'm going wow fine Super Bowl [Applause] that's awesome [Music]
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[Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] ruling I don't want to get caught it's obvious but one of the linebackers came
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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
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as I'm getting handcuffed and all I could think of I did it did the Super Bowl man
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he was arrested and charged with criminal trespass when the jury went to deliberate Mark
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asked someone in the courtroom how they thought it went and they said if no one looks at you when the jury comes back
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then you know it's bad the jurors came back in and no one looked Mark in the eye
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it was a guilty verdict but in the end his sentence was only a thousand dollar fine
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wow man so I couldn't stop thanking all the jurors and the judge me Mom Simon Cowell anybody we could think of was
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we're getting thanked that day he could cover that thousand dollar fine no problem
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companies pay millions of dollars to get coveted commercial spots in the Super Bowl and one company paid Mark to write
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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
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but you probably do remember something else this was the same Super Bowl where for
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not even a second the world saw part of Janet Jackson's chest Janet Jackson was apparently so
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offensive that more than 500 000 people filed complaints with the FCC the FCC chairman called it a crass and
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deplorable stunt he said our nation's children parents and citizens deserve better
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networks immediately took the video down but a programmer at PayPal is determined
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to find that video online and he couldn't so he and his friends built a new site
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so that people could easily upload and share videos he called it YouTube [Music]
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it's true that when you watch videos of Mark everyone does seem to be laughing and smiling one time the king of Spain
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stood up in his box and cheered and clapped for Mark he says people like it because he sticks
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to a rigid code don't interrupt the game because you can change the outcome and be prepared to spend a few hours maybe
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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
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why he does this he said that he likes to make people laugh which I've always thought is kind of a
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cop-out answer Everyone likes to make people laugh but we don't all go around taking our
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clothes off it's it's almost unbelievable liberating thing you could do I think everybody should try it at least once I
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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
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wouldn't even get the chance to run because I just fall down dead well if anybody that told me I'd have been
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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
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chance in hell since that first streak more than 25 years ago Mark's broken fingers and toes he's broken four of his
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ribs his children have begged him to stop but I always said the dead dare get food
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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
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who knows you know I might be the first pensioner to streak at the bingo or something you know
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[Music] summer plans that you'd like to tell anyone anyone about what are you trying
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to make me safe I think we'll be speaking again soon okay oh boy oh boy okay okay bye-bye
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cheers take care [Music] criminal is produced by Lauren Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob
00:20:33
Byers matild erfolino is our intern Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of
00:20:40
Criminal you can see them at thisiscriminal.com we're on Facebook and Twitter at criminal show Criminal is
00:20:48
recorded in the studios of North Carolina public radio wunc we're a proud member of radiotopia
00:20:55
from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around special thanks to adserc for providing
00:21:01
their ad serving platform to radiotopia I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music]