The UK is home to some grade A weirdos. We could list literally thousands of oddballs who have sprung from these shores. Now, while some of our army of eccentrics have gone on to forge serious political careers – many have pursued a life in crime.
When a weirdo commits a crime, there’s always a certain degree of creativity to the law breaking. From the bloke who performed military rolls in traffic while wearing a gimp suit in Somerset, to a Scot who tried to rob a bookies armed with a cucumber – here are some of the UK’s weirdest criminals. You’ve got to say they’re an unusual bunch – and you just know there are going to be lots more strange behaviour round the corner.
Somerset Gimp
The aforementioned sex-suit-road-crawler Joshua Hunt was 32 when in 2023 he was banned from dressing in an “all black gimp suit” and “crawling, wriggling or writhing on the ground” for five years.
Hunt was convicted of two offences under the Public Order act after the man terrified two female motorists in Bleadon, near Weston-super-Mare.
Akinwale Arobieke
Liverpool bodybuilder Akinwale Arobieke became an urban myth as the “muscle squeezer” – holding a long-standing fascination with bodybuilder-type physiques.
Arobieke, from Greater Manchester, was made subject of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) which banned him from touching, feeling or measuring muscles, or ordering people to do squats in public.
Arobieke died in August last year.
Space hopper
On New Year’s Day in 2015, cops pulled over a bloke riding a space hopper underneath a Dundee underpass.
In the small, wee hours of the morning the man was discovered trying to bounce his way along the dual carriageway.
Although he was stopped by police and “looked very drunk”, no formal action was taken. A witness told BBC Scotland, “It was like a scene from the movie The Hangover”.
Cucumber Bandit
What is perhaps the UK’s most infamous vegetable-related crime occurred in 2014 when a man from Glasgow tried to rob a bookies using a cucumber wrapped in a black sock made to look like a handgun.
The cucumber-wielding bloke, perhaps aptly named Gary Rough, tried to pass it off as a joke after he was knocked to the ground by an off-duty copper.
Rough added:”It was a dare… Am I getting the jail for this? I think it was quite stupid – I am not a robber. It was a laugh that went too far.”
Father Christmas
In December 2014, a man in a Santa Claus costume decided to climb on top of Glasgow’s famous Duke of Wellington statue.
The unnamed bloke sat on the back of the stone horse, behind the Duke. Fire services eventually retrieved the bonkers climber and took him down a ladder.
The man was slapped with a fixed-penalty ticket for climbing on the statue and cops later tweeted: “Don’t worry, Christmas hasn’t been cancelled – it wasn’t the real Santa.”
Neil Hopper
Not to be confused with the aforementioned Dundee Space Hopper, surgeon Neil Hopper’s crimes were a tad darker.
Last week Hopper, of Truro in Cornwall, was jailed for 32 months after he froze his own legs so they had to be amputated.
He was also given an 10-year sexual harm prevention order for insurance fraud and possessing extreme pornography.
In a tribunal Robert Dudley, representing the General Medical Council, said Hopper’s crimes were “sexually motivated by the videos and by his own amputation.”
