The start of the ride. This is the BBC World Service.

We're moving very slowly. And this is a program about being naked.

Here we go. After we turn this corner, we'll pick up pace a bit.

Hang on to your handlebars.

And what I see personally and professionally

as the benefits of nakedness.

It's a warmish day in Brighton, a city on the south coast of England.

Generally well known for being open-minded and

liberal. Easy to see that today. There are literally hundreds of naked people all

around me. I am also naked. I am a naked person. I'm on a bicycle. I'm

Dr Kion West and this is the benefits of nakedness for the BBC World Service.

For a long time people have assumed and this includes mental health

professionals that nudity especially public nudity is a sign of some kind of

psychological dysfunction. Something's wrong with you. Recently I conducted research

that suggests that actually people who get naked in public are happier and healthier than

other people and so I thought let's take it to the real world and we're better to find

lots of naked people than a world naked bike ride. That was my producer, Philippa Gearing. She was naked too, kind of, apart from bikini bottoms.

I did do a risk assessment. And recording on a bike.

Good fall over naked. Injestive bit on asphalt.

Nudity, Naturism, Nakedness.

This program is interested in it all.

What we're trying to understand is what people get out of publicly shedding their clothes.

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