Apology after naked minister joke

By Johnny Caldwell BBC News

Mr Wilson is responsible for planning in Northern Ireland

A top Stormont adviser has apologised after joking about naked holiday photographs of NI's environment minister during a planning conference.

Professor Greg Lloyd asked a delegate who referred to Sammy Wilson if the DUP minister "had had his clothes on?".

Apologising, the University of Ulster planning expert told BBC News he had made a "cheap joke without malice".

Photographs of Mr Wilson on holiday in France were published in two newspapers in 1996.

They subsequently paid undisclosed damages to him and a former girlfriend featured in the photographs.

Mr Wilson claimed the pictures had been stolen from the couple.

The conference, at which Professor Lloyd was speaking, was organised by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) at a south Belfast rugby club last Thursday.

He took up his current position as professor of urban planning and head of the University of Ulster's school of the built environment on 1 July.

Reform

Professor Lloyd is also a ministerial adviser to the Northern Ireland Assembly on its reform of land use planning.

"A lot of us thought it was incredibly disrespectful," said one delegate at the RTPI conference.

"Sammy Wilson is the minister of planning and for someone who is supposed to be working on his behalf at such a senior level to come out with these remarks is extraordinary."

Mr Wilson said: "I'm all in favour of recycling, but this is a recycled old story. Other than that I have no comment."

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