Friday 14 December 2018

UFO Landing in Beadle's About

Beadle's About was a highly controversial reality TV comedy from the 1980's and 90's. It led to its eponymous presenter, Jeremy Beadle, being branded a public enemy. The format of the programme was that an unsuspecting member of the public would be subjected to a practical joke while being filmed secretly with hidden cameras. Sometimes actors would be brought in to assist the mechanism of the prank. A typical example would be: a plumber with a nice new van would see his beloved vehicle destroyed by it trundling off a cliff or being stolen and crushed by rogue scrap metal merchants. Unknown to him, the vehicle was an identical replacement that had been switched for his own. The studio audience could be heard laughing hysterically in the background at the reaction of the participant, or should I say victim. Despite the fact that all the programmes broadcast were done so with retrospective permission from the butt of the joke, Beadle has been accused of sadism. See: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244897/.

The most ambitious trick in Beadle's About came during its last season of 1996; and it is also the most significant from a HPANWO-esque standpoint. Interestingly I never watched this at the time and I only heard about it after I was contacted last week independently by two different people. The scene had a budget of £50,000 and needed to cooperation of the police, armed forces and emergency services. A policeman who knew the subject personally was recruited to assist in the stunt. Janet Elford is a farmer's wife who lives in a small village in Dorset. She arrived home one evening to find the local bobby she knew waiting for her at the entrance to a cordon. A large area, including her home, had been sealed off and was occupied by men wearing uniforms and NBC suits. The policeman reassured Mrs Elford that her family were safe, but a strange object from space had crashed in her garden. A huge crater was sunk into the ground and a strange irregularly shaped object lay at the bottom of it with smoke coming off it. A group of actors pretending to be government scientists then ask Mrs Elford questions about "meteorite activity" in the local area and one of them asks if she has any musical abilities and she replies in the affirmative. They then persuade her to sing to the crashed object. There is a small explosion on the UFO and then a grey alien rises out of the top of it to Mrs Elford's alarm. The alien is a rather crude dummy and the audience roar with laughter at the sight of it; but Mrs Elford, in her shocked state of mind, does not notice how unrealistic the prop is. She asks in a tremulous voice: "What do you want?... What do you want from us?" The alien makes an unintelligible noise as a reply. The alien model then descends back into the UFO and Mrs Elford says: "Where are you going? Please come back." When she asks: "Do you want a cup of tea?" it reappears. She asks the alien if it's hungry and whether it can nod its head. Beadle then enters the scene dressed as an alien and, in his trademark fashion, produces a portable microphone, letting the subject know that they have been had. Mrs Elford then recognizes him and dissolves into embarrassed merriment. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnxMd5e-lM0. Nobody has ever reacted angrily at these moments and also nobody has ever guessed that they are on Beadle's About before the reveal. I have no doubt that this stunt was produced from top to bottom for entertainment purposes only. The team behind it, such as the producer Clive Doig, have a curriculum vitae than runs through the more innocent end of the media. Despite this, it is possible that other parties might have watched the skit carefully for other purposes than a primetime giggle. As I have discussed regularly on HPANWO there are elements in authority who know very well that real aliens exist and that sometimes their craft do land or crash on earth, see background links below. There have been many real events just like the comedy charade designed for Beadle's About; the most famous is the Roswell Incident of New Mexico USA in July 1947. The way the public react to them has been a source of major psychological study. I suspect that the 1938 radio docudrama War of the Worlds might have been used in this way, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2018/01/fake-hawaii-missile-alert.html. It is perfectly possible that this episode of Beadle's About has been studied by covert government psychologists. They want to know how ordinary people would react in a real situation like this. Sometimes they do more than just wait for useful opportunities; they create them, especially when it comes to young children, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2013/09/fake-roswell-at-school.html. Are they preparing the ground for real Disclosure? I'm very internally divided about that. Maybe they are trying to design methods of keeping the lid down on an accidental release of information that they do not want declassified. Either way, it is clear that even the most harmless frolics of light entertainment can be co-opted for a sinister purpose.
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2018/09/ufo-disclosure-2018-history-has-been.html.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did Mrs Elford really say to the 'alien': "Do you want a cup of tea?" If that is true, then there in that one sentence are all the reasons why I am proud to be British.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Yes, it was a wonderful moment. It reminded me of Arthur C Clarke's short story "Trouble with the Natives".

Anonymous said...

Great post Ben, I do vaguely recall that Beadles About episode. However, i think to say the show was "controversial" and that Beadle was hated that much because of his pranks, is a little exaggerated. I doubt Jeremy Beadle was public enemy number 1.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Thanks, Anon. I suppose I was exaggerating somewhat, but his show definitely was controversial, as was he.