A nude knitted vicar and four woollen friends have caused a national – and international - stir after complaints were made about them being displayed in a café window.
The story hit the headlines after the five Morris Dancer figures were displayed in all their naked glory, with accurately knitted nether regions, in the shop front in Shepton Mallet.
The stunt, involving a spectacled vicar, a Rastafarian, a policeman, a bearded man and a woman with pearls, had been a bit of fun to raise money for the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance Service. Still, after the complaints and their lower halves being covered up, a social media campaign sprang to their defence.
Cafe owner Mike Alford claims the story received press interest from New Zealand and a flood of British media enquiries after the ‘Save the Hive Five’ campaign and local paper got the word out.
He said he thought the complaint, made by a grandmother on social media who did not want her grandchildren seeing the full frontal knitted nudity, was “unjustified to a certain degree”.
He added: “Say you went to Bath, the Roman Baths, there are more statues there, if you went on a school outing, that have got more things showing than we do in our little window.”
The figures were knitted by “mature ladies” who put a lot of work into them.
Alford has now set up a Justgiving site, hoping that the publicity generated will translate to funds for the Air Ambulance appeal.
