UK professor pays for graffiti

Graham on trial for vandalising cars Naked rambler arrested again

LONDON, March 3, (AFP): A British university professor was ordered on Friday to pay most of his life savings in compensation for scratching “polite” graffiti onto dozens of luxury cars.

Stephen Graham, an urban studies expert at Newcastle University, must pay £28,000 ($42,000, 32,000 euros) compensation after he scratched the words “very silly”, “arbitrary” and other messages onto cars with a screwdriver.

Newcastle Crown Court heard that the 48-year-old academic had gone into the streets of the city in northeast England last August wearing underpants and a suit jacket and had vandalised 27 cars, after mixing alcohol with medication.

Judge Guy Whitburn accepted that Graham’s behaviour was totally out of character but insisted he must pay the compensation — effectively his and his wife’s life savings — in full.

Graham’s lawyer Julian Smith said his client had suffered a bad reaction to a combination of antibiotics for a tooth infection, medication for depression and the three quarters of a bottle of gin he had drunk.

“This is a case which is truly exceptional,” said Smith. LONDON, March 3, (AP): A British man who has spent most of the past decade naked — and in jail — was back behind bars Friday after defying an order to cover up. Stephen Gough, known as the “Naked Rambler,” was arrested Thursday as he left a court in Southampton, southern England, wearing only boots, socks and a knapsack.

A judge had just imposed an order that he must “wear sufficient clothing in public to at least cover his genitalia and buttocks.”

The 54-year-old former Royal Marine appeared at the same court Friday, and was ordered detained until a hearing on March 25.