LOCKERROOM: Nudity is a thing of beauty, but the art of streaking is hard to get your head around.

AH IT was dull at Croker yesterday and the crowd were too bored to even engage in a little Mexican waving. The weather was too unpredictable for streakers. It was left to Jason Sherlock to wake everyone up 10 minutes before the end. By then my mind had wandered.

My people. His people. Lawyers. Agents. Whatever.

Sadly, nothing could be settled in time between myself and the Spencer Tunick people last weekend and instead of getting to work with a more impressive installation he made do with several hundred standard-size goosepimpled types and Ray D'Arcy .

I'm sure the compromise hurt Spencer, but I'm afraid the tassels and thong were deal breakers.

All that grand, shivering nudity down in Blarney and in the Docklands (and not a stone thrown by any Continuity Opus Dei types) reminded me of the day in the early 80s when in the course of flinging woo at a certain party I lost both the head and my moral compass and accidentally found myself at the colours rugby game between UCD and Trinity in Donnybrook.

This was like being in downtown Kabul at rush hour with, well, just with the thong and tassels.

Most uncomfortable and hard to blend in.

I'm sure the colours games before and since have been models of decorum and have represented all that is best and most uplifting in the area of communal singing but at the time I remember my sense of Northside inadequacy being heightened by two incidents: I could hum along only while making a jolly "folk mass" type face as everyone sang verse after verse of Bestiality's Best.

And the man beside me slipped out of his white science-lab coat and ran around the field buck naked - an act which was deemed by all to be the funniest thing ever.

These were things which I had never encountered playing Junior B hurling even in exotic places like Sillogue and Clonshaugh (although I believe the scene is much changed now) and perhaps my sense of unease ruined the whole streaking thing for me forever.

I am as in favour of displays of public nudity as the next Tunick, and the sight of me in the buff pecking away at the keyboard no longer even raises eyebrows on the third floor of The Irish Timesbuilding, but I don't get streaking.

I mean I am sure it is empowering and liberating to be chased around the pitch by two portly maoir and a red-faced garda but I don't get the hilarity of it generally.

I would be more amused if everyone carried on as if the streaking party were in fact invisible.

In fairness to the streaking community they are keeping alive a tradition which had its finest era in the cultural gloom of the early-to-mid-70s and I suppose somebody has to. It should be said, too, that sport doesn't lend itself to comedy or even to irony (except among sportswriters; we as a breed tend to confuse coincidence with irony).

Après Matchon RTÉ manages to be funny but its best takes are swipes at the strong characters whom Bill O'Herlihy toys with before, during and after matches.

The Old Frank Skinner/Dave Baddiel Phoenix From the Flamesroutines were quite funny but generally sport is humour-resistant.

Perhaps the best practitioner is the French prankster ( pranksteur) Remi Gaillard. A fine introduction to Gaillard's ouvre and unlikely soccer skills is available on YouTube

[ http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=DdAOZg12tOEOpens in new window ]

Gaillard put the four-and-a-half-minute tape together for the European Championship and there is some lively debate to be had on the internet as to whether his feats of soccer sorcery were achieved in one take, as the video and Gaillard's cool demeanour suggest, or he was kicking footballs at dustbins and police stations for hours on end. Most people concede that even if the thing took a hundred takes per shot it is still pretty damn impressive.

Gaillard might be familiar to some people from the aftermath of the 2002 French Cup final, which was won by L'Orient, a team who in their excitement failed to notice that Gaillard, fully kitted out as a player, had joined them for their on-pitch celebrations, for mounting the steps to shake hands with the president, for doing a few Klinsmanns in front of the photographers and that weird "jumping up and down together" thing soccer teams like to do when in the proximity of a trophy.

My own Gaillard favourites are his daring recreation of the movie Rocky(It is called Rocky: Eye of the Kangaroo) wherein Gaillard runs through pretty much all the great shots from Stallone's inferior original movie.

The guy is French but he has cojonesand there are a couple of scenes where you know that if the unwitting participants catch Gaillard he will receive the sort of beating Rocky never had to countenance.

And then there is Gaillard's appearance at a Mr Universe contest, again an avant gardepiece of work whereby Gaillard, pale, skinny and wearing just his jocks, slips into a queue of absurdly muscled tanned or black men as they head out on to the stage to pose and strut.

He gets in a few poses which puncture the entire solemnity of the occasion before being chased off the other side of the stage via a brief trip to the rostrum for another quick pose.

It is mandatory of course to watch Gaillard's antics and to tut-tut and say such tomfoolery shouldn't be condoned, but what is funny about Gaillard is his ability to take the dull and repetitive choreography which fringes sports events and to insert himself into them seamlessly.

Performed by somebody who has no legitimate right to be there the whole thing becomes comic. A team jumping up and down in front of a cup and a posse of photographers with a complete stranger in their midst jumping up and down and mimicking their ecstasy suddenly become fairly comical themselves.

In another video he struts out to the centre of the field before a rugby game in Montpellier fully kitted out and holding a ball under his arm and swaps stern, manly handshakes with the other side's captain and the referee before suddenly taking off in a sprint to score a try and disappear into the stands.

Gaillard isn't a comic genius but he has good soccer skills and brass cojones and an eye for that element of sport which is contrived to look spontaneous but which taken apart is plain ridiculous.

Now I don't like to encourage this sort of thing, but shouldn't streaking at this stage have evolved into something that brings a little bit more imagination and humour to the party. Spencer and myself both agree that just taking your clothes off isn't enough anymore.