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11 April 2014updated 05 Oct 2023 8:46am

It’s art, says man behind creepy Facebook group Women Who Eat On Tubes

"We're all wildlife, Lucy."

By Media Mole

This morning saw an extraordinary interview with Tony Burke, who likes to take photographs of women tucking into a sandwich on the Underground, and encourage others to do the same. He told the Today programme that he was in no way just a slightly creepy man with an odd fixation on M&S pasta salads and Big Macs. Instead, he was conducting an “observational study”, which was “artistic”.

Alongside him for the interview was Lucy Brisbane McKay, who is organising a protest which involves women chowing down on whatever they fancy on the Circle Line on Monday.

listen to ‘Women Who Eat on Tubes page ‘objectifying women’’ on Audioboo

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Burke added that he was talking “posthumously”, because Facebook has now taken the Women Who Eat on Tubes page down. “I empathise with the feminist argument,” he said, “but I feel it’s not relevant in this case.”

Asked if he was treating women like a wildlife study, he replied, “We’re all wildlife, Lucy.” he added. Burke added that the site had “thrown up a number of interesting tributaries of discussion”, one of which was feminism, but more importantly, there was a question of privacy, “which affects everybody”.

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In case you ever watched Nathan Barley and thought, “Come on, no one is really like that”. . . wonder no more.

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