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Reg Presley

March 2002




I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes. No, not the early stages of arthritis but love. Lovely cuddly love, wrapped up in a three-minute pop song by Reg Presley, eventually recorded by Scottish pop group Wet Wet Wet, featured in the hit British movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, and becoming one of the longest-running chart-toppers in UK history. In fact the Wets’ 1994 version of Love Is All Around was No 1 for 15 weeks — one short of the record-breaking Bryan Adams weepie (Everything I Do) I Do It For You.
Not bad considering that Presley — no relation to the King — wrote it after an afternoon snooze in the early 60s. It earned him three Ivor Novello Awards and made him a few bob, to say the least — more than a million smackers, it has been reported.
Presley isn’t the decadent type and though the royalties — which are still coming — are very nice thank you very much, he was more pleased about being in a position of never having to work again.
That meant he could spend more time on his favourite hobby — UFOs.
He is already close to finishing a book of mysterious Fortean Times-type stuff, due out at the end of the year.
“It’s called Wild Things They Don’t Tell Us. It’s about UFOs and all that,” he says.
It is his first book. “I hope I done it right.”
Although Hampshire born and bred, Presley’s voice is almost comically Wurzel-ese. You expect him to burst in to an odd oo-aarrrrrrrh as he talks.
Which doesn’t help you take his favourite hobby too seriously.
So what made a “wildman” rock ‘n’ roll star start seeing things? Too much happy juice?
“I walked in to my first crop circle on August 7, 1990.
“It was from that point that I started, I suppose, opening my mind to other things.
“It was a Sunday afternoon, beautiful weather and I said to the wife ‘let’s drive out see what it looks like.’
“When we got there, a guy was stood with a couple of dousing rods. I used to douse for water when I was a bricklayer looking for a pipe, so I knew what they were and I knew they worked.
“I gave it a go across the crop circle and I knew there was energy there. I knew that there was more to this than meets the eye.”
Do you believe there is something out there?
He seems a bit hesitant. “There is a possibility there, but I wouldn’t say for definite because we haven’t really got that proof.
“But there have been some sightings of things in the air, just hovering there with no noise. And the following day you see crop circles where they were hovering.”
So what has he seen?
“We have seen geese flying across a valley in a V formation but they break when they fly across a crop circle edge, as though they have hit an invisible wall. They fly round it and join up the other side.”
“And I’ve seen ten UFOs,” he says confidently.
“I've seen two on one night that would blow your mind. These are nuts and bolts UFOs.
“I wasn’t on my own and a TV camera team was there.
“They all saw what I saw. It’s not as if we had a mass hallucination. It was actually there. If it hadn’t been raining the cameramen would have had it on film.”
Like many spotters, Reg has a conspiracy theory.
“I know the Government must be covering up because with their technology the military must have known those craft were there because they flew straight over an RAF base.
“I know they’re there. When you see your first one you’ll go ‘I know’.”

The Troggs appear with The Spencer Davis Group and The Yardbirds at the Royal Concert Hall on April 4. Tickets are £13.50-£17.50 from the box office. Call 0115 989 5555.

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