The man dubbed the "Naked Ramber” was yesterday given a two and a half year jail sentence for once more breaching a court order preventing him from appearing unclothed in public.

Stephen Gough’s long-held personal crusade is that he is entitled to walk the streets in the nude.

But bystanders have routinely complained to the police about his appearances - and the courts has now convicted him 30 times in the past 11 years.

The jury at yesterday’s brief Winchester Crown Court trial returned a unanimous guilty verdict in a matter of minutes on one charge of breaching an indefinite Anti-social Behaviour Order imposed by Southampton Magistrates Court last year.

This bans him from appearing naked in public unless it is in public changing rooms, for a medical examination or on a nudist beach.

Senior Crown Advocate Simon Jones, prosecuting, told how when Gough was released from Winchester Prison on April 15 this year he walked onto the busy Romsey Road, naked except for socks and boots, adding: “A clearer breach there couldn’t be.”

PC Rich Moody, sent to meet the 55-year-old outside the prison, told Winchester Crown Court how the former Royal Marine declined to put on the tracksuit top and bottoms he offered him.

Interviewed later that day, Gough maintained to police he had a valid excuse for the breach: “It don’t make sense to me,” he said.

“I want to live my life in a reasonable way.

“I am not a robot and have to follow what makes sense to me.”

Former lorry driver Gough, who used to live in Eastleigh, did not have any legal representation and made brief naked appearances in the dock.

Judge Jane Miller QC repeatedly ordered for him to be brought up from the cells to ask if he was prepared to put on clothes so he could be seen by the jury and take part in the trial.

Each time Gough refused and was taken back down the stairs again.

Passing sentence Judge Miller suggested discussions be held to try and find a closed naked community he would be prepared to live in on his next release: “If there’s a way out of the endless cycle of prison I would like to find it,” she added.

Gough, who had denied the charge, merely sighed in response to his latest sentence and was then returned to jail, where he has already spent stints totalling around eight years.