Men Are Wearing ‘Just Stop Oil’ T-Shirts on Stag Parties Now

When I saw a groom on his stag back in July chatting to police at the British Grand Prix while wearing that distinctive orange Just Stop Oil T-shirt, I thought it was the pinnacle of humour. You immediately get it: the intention of it, the effect of it. To wear that top at a major public event is to mark yourself as a threat to the peace, even if you are, in fact, just Darren from Brent.

Which brings us on to Just Stop Oil itself. The environmental activist group formed in February 2022, and I probably don’t have to tell you they’ve been disrupting events and day-to-day life in the UK ever since, albeit for an urgent cause, and getting jailed for it.

A YouGov poll in April found that 36 percent of adults feel “very unfavourably” towards Just Stop Oil, although there is a notable difference in opinion among the age groups. Eighteen percent of 18-24-year-olds feel “very unfavourably”, and this rises to 50 percent in the over 65s. Just Stop Oil are a little hated in the UK – which is what makes the stag do bit all the funnier. 

There have been a number of stag lads coopting the activist group’s outfit recently: Back in June, this guy got involved in Just Stop Oil’s slow march in London before running off with a banner. There was this guy at the darts, and check out these fellas stomping about in Magaluf. 

Which brings us to last weekend, when Leighton Buzzard-based 34-year-old electrician Kieran Fensom was made to wear the T-shirt at Luton Airport on his stag do trip to Prague. 

According to Fensom’s mate, a Northamptonshire-based site manager named Jonny Kalko, Fensom’s soon-to-be father-in-law saw the Grand Prix guy and thought it would be a great idea for Fensom’s stag. Fensom didn’t know about it until he was outside the airport for the midday flight.

“Some of the looks he was getting,” Kalko – whose TikTok of the whole ordeal has racked up 1.5 million views – says. “People genuinely, genuinely hated him. There was a couple that was sat around us at a pub who looked disgusted until they realised it was a stag do.”

Not everyone worked that out, though, Kalko, 35, says. “I think some people got it straightaway because it was 16 of us. It was a big group, and there was one person with the T-shirt on so, to me, it was quite obvious what it was. But some people just thought he was a protester and just looked fuming at him.”

Fensom got through security OK. Once onboard the Whizz Air plane, though, he was immediately apprehended by the pilot, “who must have seen him on the runway”, Kalko says. Fensom swore it was only for a stag do; the pilot said he’d have to kick him off it wasn’t.

“He's then turned to the rest of the passengers and said, ‘Who’s with him?’ I put my hand up and said ‘Me’, and he came over to me and said, ‘Look, is it genuinely a stag do?’” Kalko had to show the pilot the stag do group chat to prove it. 

The pilot was sound enough to let Fensom fly as long as he removed the top, and even joked that “he’d be definitely getting off” the plane if Man United supporter Fensom had worn an Arsenal shirt, the stag party’s second choice T-shirt. The orange top was “retired” for the remainder of the trip, Kalko says.

Just Stop Oil have tried to own the phenomenon, posting a TikTok of the stag doers disrupting their protest with the heading “Just Stag Oil”. (It should be noted that the stag lads are shouting things like “We love you oil, we do, oh oil we love you!”)

A spokesperson for Just Stop Oil tells VICE: “We'd like to thank and congratulate all the stag dos wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts during their revelry. There is an understanding across the UK that we need to End New Oil and Gas, and the use of Just Stop Oil as part of stag 'fancy dress' is part of this recognition. 

“It also indicates that Just Stop Oil are rapidly becoming cultural heros, our supporters are the new suffragettes as politics continues to fail us. To protect the future lives that the stag dos are celebrating we need to join together and become a real opposition. Come and slow march with us in London.”

On Just Stop Oil in general, however, Kalko says: “I don’t rate ‘em.” 

“I think the way they go about what they're doing just makes people against them. I think if they protested their views in a different way, then people might be more sympathetic to them.” 

That moment, for Kalko, came when they disrupted an October performance of Les Miserables at the Sondheim Theatre in London. “That's my favourite musical, believe it or not,” he says. “I’d have been absolutely fuming if I was there.”