Man told police he was trying to light a fart, not film up woman's skirt

A man walked into a bar and attempted to a take a photograph up a woman’s skirt, a court was told. A jury watched CCTV footage of Brian Whitehead entering Lloyd’s bar in the V Shed in Bristol and placing a mystery object under a woman’s clothing as she stood at the bar.

When Whitehead was tracked down he conceded to police his actions looked “distinctly dodgy” but insisted he had not been holding either a camera or a camera phone, saying it could have been a cigarette lighter. Whitehead, 39, of Easton Road, Bristol, denies committing an act outraging public decency, by placing a camera under a skirt in September last year. Whitehead denied his actions were lewd, said he had been drunk and denied using a camera or having a sexual motive.



Whitehead told the jury: “I don’t remember it clearly. I don’t know what I was doing. I believe I had a Clipper cigarette lighter, a black one. I think it was still in my hand after just having a cigarette.” In his police interview Whitehead suggested that what happened could have been an practical joke. He told officers: “Maybe I was trying to light a fart. It could have been a joke. Maybe someone says ‘I bet you a fiver if you light her fart’.”

In court, Whitehead told the jury: “When I made that comment it was a flippant remark in the interview room.” Whitehead said he wasn’t sober at the time and had a mobile phone without a camera. He said he had drank six to eight pints of Stella lager a day for 20 years, had a “very low” alcohol tolerance and could have been staggering at the time. He said: “I didn’t place a camera or camera device under the skirt of that girl at the bar.” The case continues.