11/06/2008 22:35. THE National Archives Office has opened its files on reported UFO sightings from the 1980s. From memory everyone you met in the 80s looked like an alien or talked like one.

But should there be a rash of contacts and landings this year, our visitors are likely to be interstellar scrap metal merchants.

If ever a species got lumbered with unlucky physics it's the humans. Think about it. Everything we really depend on is buried in the ground, oil, iron ore, coal, potatoes. Imagine how much happier people would be if chips grew on trees.

Anyway, the thing is all this difficult to get out of the ground stuff is expensive, lately very expensive, so more and more people have resorted to just nicking it.

You might think a pile of old exhaust pipes was of little interest to anyone, unless... // Southport Visiter