Steve Allen: The strange return of the crop circle

At least five new strange patterns have been spotted in the UK.

It's a blast from the past.

I remember that era when every summer was filled with stories of messed-up fields and claims that they could be caused by aliens.

In the 1990s, we were convinced our fields were the playthings of ET and that planes near the Bermuda Triangle would disappear.

There's a meme that points out that the number of miracles reported since the invention of the camera has dropped, and by the same theory, we see that no one talks about the Bermuda Triangle now we have GPS.

Steve Allen wonders over the recent sightings of crop circles in the UK (Image: Steve Allen)

Something like that must have happened to crop circles because they are now seen as so terrestrial that a police force has warned they could charge those who create them.

Surely that means we think they're man-made.

It would be a bold threat from a police force to think they could slap a ticket on the windscreen of a parked UFO.

A civilisation that is so advanced it can travel across space to Earth, but somehow the cops think they can catch them.

Maybe the aliens would be easy to outwit.

If the best idea you have with all that technology is to turn up to a planet and flatten some wheat, you're not the brightest star in the sky.

Of course, it's people.

In 1991, two men called Doug Bower and Dave Chorley confessed to having made more than 200 crop circles since the late 1970s using nothing more complex than ropes and boards.

They were inspired by a 1966 account of a UFO sighting in Australia where a flying saucer supposedly left a depressed area of reeds in a lagoon.

They thought, "We could do that."

It won't be the same people doing it in 2026.

The 1990s were a while ago.

If you were active then, you're not far off retirement.

That's too old to be getting a rural ASBO.

It makes more sense for aliens to do it.

For all we know, that's some method of communication we don't yet understand.

If it's humans doing it, they have one of the worst hobbies going.

What do you fancy doing on the weekend? Flattening some cereal?

Whether these field designs are caused by alien life or by pranksters, they should both realise their time has been and gone.

• Steve Allen is a comedian, broadcaster and author, for more from Steve, listen to his podcast ‘Steve N Allen Almost Daily’.