Beam Me Up, Scotty!

I watched an amazing programme on Channel 4 last night on alleged Alien Abductees -  which was weirdly repellent and yet completely fascinating at the same time.

A bit like Jeremy Kyle - you know that you should really hit the off button, but at the same time you can't really believe what's going on - right in front of your own eyes. 

So, I was hooked as the programme told the tales of three 'abductees' - Simon, Maria and Chantelle - who have, so they say, been 'taken' by aliens and often against their will.

Simon, a Labour councillor, seemed to be the most sanguine about his close encounters which went way beyond the Third Kind' - because he claimed to have an alien mother and at least one alien child - whom he still visits from time to time.

At one point during Simon's tale I had a vision myself of Ed Miliband reading the riot act to party managers - telling them that this was taking the notion of Labour's 'broad church' much too far.

Fellow abductee Chantelle, on the other hand, was distinctly unhappy about her frequent alien encounters which - for some unexplained reason - seemed to occur most often when she was enjoying a meal of Kentucky Fried Chicken with her son, and his friend.

At other times, Chantelle would be abducted on her way to or from the local shops - which understandably made her fearful of going out too often - although in all other respects she seemed like a perfectly nice person.

I did wonder, at one point, whether Chantelle's unwelcome kidnappers might be a new, more forceful breed of NHS 'smoking cessation' operatives - since she reported that when the aliens came to her home they always hid her cigarettes.

Whatever the case whoever was hiding Chantelle's fags failed miserably - because by the end of the programme she was still puffing away.

Maria, the third abductee, also seemed like quite a normal person, but believed that she was a child of aliens, that she had alien DNA and alien implants in various parts of her body - all of which sounded quite scary - yet Maria, unlike Chantelle, seemed more weary and sad than scared. 

Maria was also the only abductee to undergo any kind of scientific tets about her alien abduction claims - by agreeing to take a 'lie detector' test which she failed at the first hurdle in a scene which reminded me of the film Blade Runner - although thankfully without Maria shooting her interrogator from close range.

Maria also had her DNA tested and to no one's surprise, apart from her own, the results came back perfectly normal - so I hope she gets some help soon because Maria is clearly a decent person with a contribution to make to society.

Now the interesting thing is that all three people seemed perfectly sincere - as far as I could tell they believed in what they were saying - but the same thing is true of many  religions which have fantastical creation and other myths.

So it seems to me that Simon, Chantelle and Maria are no more or less bonkers than lots of other people in this crazy mixed up world - although I'm not sure I would welcome them having power over other people because then we could face a few problems.

The time to start worrying is is Simon makes a real mark on politics and rises up through the ranks of the Labour Party - then it could be time to leave the country.