Don’t peek under my kilt, piper pleads

Groping, photos by women a strain, he says

Asking a Scotsman what he is wearing under his kilt is often considered a lighthearted joke.

But a leading bagpiper has complained that it constitutes harassment and said women use it as an opportunity to grope and “upskirt” those who wear traditional Highland dress.

Willie Armstrong, a member of the popular Scots band the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, said women took indecent photographs of him at gigs and suggested that double standards were at play.

Taking part in a discussion on “upskirting” on BBC Radio Scotland, Armstrong, 55, said: “It’s the constant ‘ are you a true Scotsman?’ They are basically asking you if you are wearing underwear or not.

“If you reversed that behaviour and I was to say to a woman, can I ask what you are wearing underneath your dress, it would be a whole different ball game. I just get weary of the whole thing.”

Upskirting, which was banned in Scotland in 2009 and in England and Wales last year, is the practice of taking images or videos under a person’s clothing without their consent. Women in skirts and dresses are usually the victims.

Armstrong, who once had to stop a performance after a woman took a picture underneath his kilt and passed it around the table, said he believed other pipers had had similar experiences, but their concerns were often laughed off or dismissed.

“I had to stop and tell her to delete the picture, that it isn’t acceptable,” he said. “I keep thinking, imagine I’d done that to her — I would be arrested, and rightly so. I don’t find it funny — and I know other men do find it funny. A lot of the time you just accept it because we are who we are.

“But it’s not just me, it’s every member of the band it has happened to.

“I remember playing at Ayr Town Hall. I came off the stage, the crowd go crazy, and in trying to get back to the stage I don’t know how many times there were hands up my kilt. I’m trying to play my pipes, but I’m also trying to protect my own dignity.”

But the behaviour had been “constant” even since he was a boy, Armstrong said, and at one point in his career was experiencing incidents “almost every week.”

Dawn Waddell, the band secretary of the City of St Andrews Pipe Band, said that it was unfortunately common for members of the public to “take liberties” with pipers.

She added that women, especially at functions like weddings, could adopt a “ladette” behaviour and “don’t take it seriously or think it’s a problem.”

“Pipe bands, especially when they’re out playing and out marching are often seen as a free for all. There’s this kind of culture that if you’re out in the public arena then you’re public property,” she said.