Nudity is not a moral, but an aesthetic, matter

Female nudes, no matter how perfectly proportioned, are not a patch on fellows ? too many lumps and bumps

Let us turn our attention, in light of the recent incident in Hampshire, to the serious questions of public decency and naked radio. For those unfamiliar with the story, here's the nub. A certain man went down from Eastleigh to Southampton and fell among prudes. His name is Steve Gough, he's 43, and he was booked to do an interview with John Peel, the presenter of Home Truths, Radio 4's hugely popular Saturday morning show, on the subject of naturism. Mr Gough firmly believed that it is every individual's God-given right to go naked wherever and whenever he/she chooses and, by way of practising what he preaches, turned up at the BBC studios in Havlock Road last Wednesday wearing nothing but a pair of sandals.

Yes, it was extremely cold in Southampton last Wednesday, but this did not deter our doughty hero from cycling the five miles from his home in Eastleigh on a push-bike without so much as a mitten to protect him from the icy winds blowing off the Solent. You may question his sanity, but there's no denying that Mr Gough is a man of principle who puts his money where his mouth is, instead of a thick woolly muffler as I would have done in similar weather conditions.

So anyway, he turns up for the interview and the doorman bars his entry on the grounds that to get to the studio he will have to pass a lot of people who may be offended by his nakedness. We do not know how many motorists, bus passengers, ramblers, clerics, lollipop ladies and children riding ponies he offended on his five-mile streak into town, but we do know that when he got home Mr Gough was waylaid by a policeman and charged with breaching the peace. Last year, charged with the same offence, he turned up in court, predictably, in the buff.

So tell me, where do you stand on public nakedness – all for, strongly against, don't know or don't give a fig leaf? That reminds me of the summer I spent as a student working in a gift shop on the Via Conciliazione next to St Peter's in Rome. I was trying to learn Italian. Mr Boccolini's shop did a brisk trade in crucifixes fashioned from splinters of the true cross, rosaries made from garden of Gethsemane olive stones, and statuettes of Michelangelo's David with or without fig leaves, depending, advised Mr Boccolini, on whether we thought the customers were prudish. I didn't then and I do not now believe that preferring people with clothes rather than without clothes has anything to do with prudery; it has everything to do with aesthetics.

Michelangelo's magnificent 14-foot-high sculpture in Florence, carved from white Carrara marble, is a symbol of perfection, a paean to male beauty in its prime, on which a fig leaf would look as absurd as a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Unfortunately, Mr Boccolini's cheap plaster-of-Paris repros deliberately emphasised the macho, with the result that all his Davids were hung like horses and, to my sensitive young soul at least, deeply offensive. I only sold the ones with fig leaves.

Never having set eyes on Mr Gough, I have no idea how closely his physique resembles that of Michelangelo's lad, but if it does, that doorman deserves a stern reprimand. How often is it given to us mere mortals to witness divine perfection in the shape of the perfect, unadorned male torso? At the risk of sounding sexist, female nudes, no matter how perfectly proportioned, aren't a patch on fellows – too many lumps and bumps.

One my strangest assignments was to report on a new naturist holiday camp near Orpington in Kent, to which the locals were objecting on the usual grounds of public decency. Unlike Mr Gough, I had great difficulty getting past the doorman because I wasn't naked. I'd be lying if I told you that all the men I saw in that Orpington Eden looked like young gods, but by and large they passed muster, playing golf and tennis and croquet wearing only sports socks and trainers. There was, however, something distinctly unsettling about the women drinking cocktails in the bar wearing nothing but handbags over their arms.

All things considered, radio seems the perfect place for nudity. Years ago, when he was king of Virgin Radio, Chris Evans caused a storm on his breakfast show by inviting a young woman who had just had a boob job to strip off and show the listeners the result. It was saucy stuff. Home Truths may have missed the boat this time, but mark my words, naked radio is the way forward.