David Chorley interviewed by CBC (Canada)
Interviewer: Mr Chorley, you, a man [as opposed to alien] and your partner have confused and confounded the world for the last... how many years?
Chorley: 13 years.
Interviewer: 13 years [ago] is when you made your first crop circle?
Chorley: That’s right.
Interviewer: Why are you now spilling the beans?
Chorley: Why are we now spilling the beans? Because the time has come to do so, for many reasons. Erm, the main reason being that now it’s become a multi-million pound business, and also, erm, on our [UK] television back in the beginning of the season, no sorry - back in the [corrects himself] about two weeks ago they decided to try and ask our government for money. We thought this had gone completely, er, too far now.
Interviewer: When you say it’s become a [multi] million pound industry, you’re not talking about the money you’ve made?
Chorley: [Incredulous] Sorry? The money we’ve made?
Interviewer: [Laughing] Yes.
Chorley: The money we’ve made, no not a penny out of it.
Interviewer: Who’s making the money?
Chorley: People writing books. And also it’s causing, like, Japanese are spending, erm, millions coming over here and surveying fields in England in the West Country.
Interviewer: How did you and your partner come up with the idea?
Chorley: What, at the beginning?
Interviewer: Yeah!
Chorley: At the beginning of it? Well my friend [Bower] was, erm, in Australia for a few years, and he heard a report on the radio in Queensland that there was a crop circle. When he came back to England, he came back after about six years, and we formed a friendship - because we were both artists...
Interviewer: [Interrupting] Right.
Chorley: ...or painters. So, we were out one night, we used to go out and discuss... erm, whatever, you know - watercolour painting, and have a beer together. One evening he thought, well, why... [changing tack] at this time, this was 1978, and the UFO phenomenon was raging down in Wiltshire. So we thought, oh, we’ll try one in a field. Why not try one? So we put one down. We did this for two years, or over, and nothing came of it. So we decided then, that whet we’d been doing was putting them in fields that were out of sight of the general public. So, on the - near Winchester, in Hampshire in England...
Interviewer: Uh-huh
Chorley: There’s a hill called Cheesefoot Head, with a great view, erm, from a good height down into a dell [sic]. So we put one down there, and it was taken up my Mr Pat Delgado, and from then on it [the subject] took off.
Interviewer: Over that 13 years, how many circles did you put down?
Chorley: How many circles... average 25 [thinks] anything from 20 to 25 to 30 a year.
Interviewer: Technically how did you do it, because we’ve had theories all over the place. Somebody, in fact, I talked to somebody on this programme, who said it was caused by little tiny tornadoes [sic].
Chorley: Yeah, that’s right. That’s Dr Terence Meaden.
Interviewer: He was on our show in the spring. How did you make the circles?
Chorley: We made the circles with, erm, the most primitive equipment of two piece, er, sticks, four foot long, 2-by-1, and two pieces of string as, erm, [like] with the demonstration we did [for the newspaper] Today we did the same thing [as that]. Cross pieces, er, a baseball cap with the, erm, eye piece on - a sight - and that’s about [remembers something] oh, and pieces of string, and that’s our, that was our equipment.
Interviewer: [Laughs] How do you physically make the circle? Someone stands in the middle and...
Chorley: No, no. What you do, you hold the four-foot long piece of wood...
Interviewer: Yeah.
Chorley: Piece of string attached each end, with I suppose a bit of four-foot [?], so you hold that, you put one foot on the end of one foot [?] and then when you tread that down, you’ve got the first circle. You just keep going [round], to whatever distance [diameter] you like.
Interviewer: What do you do with the baseball cap?
Chorley: The baseball cap has a [laughs] a piece of wire on the end, bent - this is for when you want to get long, straight runways on what they call the dumbbell. And you pick up, erm, in the distance, on a cottage window that’s alight or a tree in the distance, and therefore when you follow that, walking, you get a pure straight line.
Interviewer: How do we know, Mr Chorley, that you’re not... you’re not hoaxing us now about the hoax?
Chorley: You don’t know do you!?
Interviewer: No, I don’t.
Chorley: Well, you don’t know.
Interviewer: [Laughs]
Chorley: You don’t know!
Interviewer: Did you ever export the technology, because we’ve had circles here in Canada?
Chorley: Of course you have.
Interviewer: In Saskatchewan.
Chorley: You have - how long have you had them in Canada?
Interviewer: Certainly within the last thirteen years! [laughs]
Chorley: Yeah, right - and do you know why?
Interviewer: [Still laughing]
Chorley: Because my friend and I, Doug Bower, were the instigators, with the story I told you of coming over from Canada [mistake for Australia]... we used to see up on Cheesefoot Head a lovely social gathering where you’d meet Americans, Canadians, erm, Japanese, Germans, so on a Friday night up there it was quite a party. Therefore, erm, going back home, what would they do? What would you do? Have a go on a field in your country, and that’s when they [the circles] started coming [to Canada etc].
Interviewer: But they didn’t - you didn’t share the technique with anybody, [so] how would they know how to make the circle?
Chorley: We did not share the technique, and funnily enough with the ones we’ve done, we’ve always had the accolade that somehow there are certain ones that all, that are always sharper cut, and that used to give us quite a good feeling when that happened.
Interviewer: [Laughs]
Chorley: Erm, so, there you go. That’s how that they arrived in Canada, the United States, and whatever.
Interviewer: Are you and your partner planning to cook anything else up in the next few years?
Chorley: Well, we, erm... I’m 62 and he’s 67, but there’s a little glint still left in our eyes.
Interviewer: [Laughs loudly] Well, you fooled everybody for a long time.
Chorley: Yeah... we’ve got a battle royal still, though [to convince everyone].
Interviewer: Oh, you do indeed! Thank you for talking to us.
Chorley: OK.
Interviewer: Alright, good night.