THE head of one of the country’s biggest security groups has been given an honour which allows him to carry a naked sword in public.

John Roddy has joined a select group to be granted Freedom of the City of London in a ceremony conducted at The Guildhall in London.

He is chief executive of the Shield Group, a company that employs 2,500 people in the UK and helps provide security at some of the biggest and most important buildings in the country, such as London’s famous Guerkin skyscraper.

He joins other notable recipients including William Pitt the Younger, David Livingstone, Florence Nightingale, Princess Diana, and more recently Judi Dench, Annie Lennox and Stephen Fry.

He said: “This is a great honour and privilege.”

First recorded in 1237 at the ceremony new freemen receive a guide to conducting their lives in an honourable fashion and an impressive sealed certificate.

A number of rights have traditionally been associated with freemen – the right to drive sheep and cattle over London Bridge; to carry a naked sword in public; or that if the City of London Police finds a freeman drunk and incapable, they will bundle him or her into a taxi and send them home rather than throw them into a cell. John, a father-of-four, from Gorse Covert, said: “Sadly these are now seen as symbolic!”

He has spent 20 years building up knowledge within the field of security and working as a detective at Greater Manchester Police.