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We've survived it all before... even aliens landing on M62

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date24 June 2022
Publication titleHuddersfield Daily Examiner
Older generations have seen it all before: wars, moon landings, shortages, strikes, three-day weeks, and power cuts which I survived by playing Subbuteo table football by candle-light

When the power went off at night, I played endless games with a mad Scotsman called Alex Cameron who happened to be my wife's step-father.

Older generations seen it all moon landings, strikes, three-and power survived by Subbuteo.

A life lesson I learned was that Scots are competitive, with or without a claymore, and that Alex believed even the table top version of football was a man's game, as my team were kicked asunder.

We have also had Cold War scares, acid rain from Chernobyl and the Great Alien Invasion Panic of West Yorkshire. My wife Maria was : wars, shortages, responsible for that.

day weeks cuts... I playing

In the early years of BBC's TV text service Ceefax, she read a report that said aliens had landed in a flying saucer on the M62 near Huddersfield. She phoned me at the Examiner office and I delicately questioned the story's veracity. "It's on TV now," she said. "I'm reading it."

Which is how Neil Atkinson, ace journalist and crime reporter, phoned Huddersfield Police Station and asked: "Have aliens landed on the M62?"

Perhaps they had called at Hartshead Services for refreshment.

The police discovered the BBC Ceefax had been a test transmission. The words Maria had failed to notice were right at the start of the report: "Imagine if … " A bit like the consternation caused in America by Orson Welles with his radio version of War of The Worlds in 1938 in which he reported aliens were invading New York. Which, as a prime target, is a bit more...

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