Well what a week that was!
The release of the third collection of MoD UFO files at The National Archives made headlines both in the UK and across the world. Some of the best coverage appeared in the UK's Sunday broadsheets, particularly the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Independent on Sunday and Observer. All these newspapers drew heavily upon background material, including a detailed summary of highlights, that I had prepared for the TNA press office in advance of the release.
Items also appeared on Sky News and BBC News Online, including one story that followed up the still unfolding saga of the UFO photographs from Calvine. On Monday, leading articles also appeared in London’s Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Sun.
Once again the coverage was largely serious in tone with media attention concentrating on the MoD’s interest in spy planes and foreign technology as opposed to nebulous alien forces. As I was quoted by BBC Online:
"The vast majority of reports are ordinary things seen in extraordinary situations. So many things can be interpreted as unusual, you've got to eliminate all that noise and see what's left. I don't think there's any solid evidence [contained in these files]...to suggest that we have been visited by intelligent life but I don't think you can rule that out."
It remains to be seen whether this level of media interest will be sustained later this year when further collections of UFO files are released by the MoD. Some 70 or more files have been earmarked for transfer to the TNA before the end of this year. This will take the chronology from 1993 to 1999 and, in the process, add some tens of thousands of pages to the ongoing process of disclosure.
But by far the biggest success of the week was the podcast I recorded, which – complete with animated images and X-files style background music – was uploaded to YouTube last Sunday.
To our surprise this quickly became the 70th most viewed video on YouTube UK this week, with almost 30,000 viewings recorded along with dozens of comments.
My favourite is the comment posted by ‘jordanj008’ relating to the strange drawing of a banana-shaped UFO which appears among the UFO images in the video: “…British intelligence has to work hard to protect people from banana attacks [sic]. Are bananas friendly or aggressive? Should I be afraid of bananas? Do overripe bananas develop limbs? If I eat bananas will their family revenge me? Are all bananamen blue or are there more primitive ones that are yellow? Can anyone answer my questions, I am getting paranoid!”
To watch the video click here!
The banana shaped UFOs are the product of some grotesque experiments conducted by a secret unit of the USAAF. Stanton Friedman has made vague references to a Col Del Monte. There is of the course the famous case of the Brazilian family who were held under siege by 8ft vegetable marrows. The eat five a day campaign has a lot more to it!
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