Peeping Dave

SallyB2
By SallyB2 Last edited 198 months ago
Peeping Dave
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We like a funny story on Londonist, and this has had us tittering into our tea mugs all day. One David Gay, of Finsbury Park, is up in the dock accused of using stealth cameras to film up ladies’ skirts.

Voyeurs are of course fundamentally pretty sad creatures, and the idea that someone has the power to see into areas which are private or sacred to another individual is, frankly, dead creepy. Clearly this guy is better off the streets, especially in view of the lewd connotations of his actions. Oh, and the fact that he wanted to sell the images on-line – that isn’t too much in his favour either.

But the peeping tom is also a figure of burlesque fun, in the best what-the-butler-saw, end of pier tradition. The idea of a rotund and bespectacled Victorian gent getting titillated by a bit of saucy seaside stocking is one of the stock figures of British popular culture. The fact that the Finsbury Fumbler went to all the trouble of installing cameras in the tips of his trainers, and another (for positioning purposes, apparently – oh, the technical wizardry) at the rear of his handbag renders him a clown of Benny Hill-esque proportions, and we should avoid getting on our moral or feminist high horses about it all.

Furthermore, with all due respect to the beautifully hosieried super-models amongst you, Londonist cannot think the perverted perpetrator got an awful lot of, er, exciting footage out of the exercise: a trip to Trafalgar Square (where he was finally rumbled) barely merits the donning of fine silk stockings, and, yup, we admit it – Brit women aren’t known for their sartorial elegance (inside or outside of the boudoir).

Wethinks the constabulary should take him on board and put his obvious surveillance experience to some use.

Image care of Tom Poe’s flickr stream

Last Updated 26 September 2007