hThe Big Breakfast (Part 1)

Later that day, the journalist that I had tipped off came into my office (the pub) and told me that the Big Breakfast wanted to interview me the following morning in London and to eat up my lettuce, brush my teeth and make my way to Lime Street station. After picking up a few things, I got to the station and headed off to London. I was put up in a hotel overnight and was to be on the show early the next morning.

I arrived at the 'house' around 07:00 in the morning and was taken into make-up, where I asked if they could cover up the spots on my arse as well as the ones on my face. There was a guy sitting in the chair next to me getting "done" at the same time and we started to have a laugh together. After getting made-up, I went back to the 'green room', which was just a Portakabin with a kettle and a TV, (it looked like a workman's hut really). A security guard came and told me that he had been assigned to me for the morning. because the show was going out 'live', the powers that be didn't trust me and thought that I needed to be watched;- closely! People should realise that it takes more than one guard to stop me from performing and if I wanted to get on, I could.  If I went to the toilet, the guard was behind me, if I went to a different part of the room, he was behind me. This was ridiculous, but humorous, as I had no intention of streaking, so I thought I may as well wind him up for his trouble! As he went for a cup of coffee, I hid under a table and watched him as he started to panic. There was a door at either end of the room and as he went to one door, I jumped up and ran to the other. I played " 'willy', wont he" for a couple of minutes but when I saw beads of sweat appear on his forehead, I decided that I didn't want to give him a cardiac arrest and gave up.

When he got over his panic attack, I was led into the 'house' to be interviewed by Gaby Roslin. At one part of the interview, I hadn't finished talking when 'Gobby' told me to shut up. I thought this very rude, as I was on the show to be interviewed, so beat her around the back of the head with a car battery! Further on in the interview, I was told that they had brought in a top psycho-analyst from Harley Street, to obviously see if I was mad or not. This didn't bother me, bring him on! The doctor turned out to be the guy I'd been having a laugh with earlier in make-up. When Gaby asked him what he thought about what I did, he said that he thought it was very funny but that I'd have to try and better each streak each time I did them. He was on my side!  This left 'Gobby' dumb struck, who then said ''Oh, I never expected you to say that''. After realising that she was on the dirty end of the stick, the interview came to a close and I like to think that I won the day. After the show had finished, the doctor asked me if I would like to take part in a sex educational video a friend of his was making, which I politely declined, as it involved wearing a miners helmet and a duck!

Coverage of the "Fred" streak was sold to 83 countries and is still being shown today,6 years on. Fred later won ''Weatherman of the Year'' award (obviously helped by the coverage he received from the streak) picked from weathermen around the world and had to go to Japan to pick up his award! When he went through customs, he had the video footage of the streak confiscated, as the authorities deemed it 'pornography'.

I was later told 'unofficially' that my streak was one of the defining moments in TV history!

Follow the story at The Big Breakfast (Part 2).