According to UK Com
edy website Chortle, comedian Andrew Maxwell, has doled out a some surprising revelations regarding his controversial BBC TV show “Conspiracy Road Trip”. He was arrested at gun point while filming the “documentary” but claims his amazing stand up act saved him from serving time in a US prison. He and his team were detained at infamous “secret” US Military base, Area 51. Apparently Maxwell’s madcap routine about The Middleton Sisters which stopped him from being hilariously flung into a dingy holding cell:
The Irish comic and a documentary crew had snuck into the vast desert installation, believed by ufologists to contain remains of a flying saucer that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, to shoot a BBC show.
But guards armed with machine guns swooped, and ordered the group of 12 to lie face down on the floor for three hours while the FBI checked their credentials.
Maxwell claims that only the intervention of a Lincoln County deputy sheriff, who had seen his Live at the Apollo routine about the Middleton sisters, prevented them from being thrown in a Nevada jail.
The group, containing four ufologists, had been trying to communicate with the aliens through dance.
‘It was all tongue-in-cheek’ Maxwell explains. ‘I’d convinced them that there was no way we were actually going to see any aliens, so we were forming these geometric shapes, getting so fucking giggly, so excited at being in Area 51.’
[My emphasis] full story at Chortle.co.uk
A number of curious quotes suggest the licence fee payer funded BBC’s usually high standards of journalism are being given a novel new twist in the programme:
‘We got to the barrier and I’m expecting some soldiers to come out and tell us to “piss off”,’ Maxwell said. ‘We’ll have that on camera, job done, that’s enough for British TV.
‘Surveillance cameras zoned in on us but nobody comes out. Nothing happens. We’re a bit deflated so I stick my hand under the barrier. Then I go into the base. We’re there for about half an hour, dancing. No one comes out.
‘The one of our group knocks on the guard hut door and all hell breaks loose, four soldiers rush out with M16s. ‘On the fucking floor! On the floor right now!’ We spent three, maybe four hours like that. Passports taken, all the footage and equipment.
The deputy had a sense of humour. It had been rung through to him that I was an Irish comedian leading these UFO nutjobs, that I didn’t believe any of it and was there to debunk it for the BBC.
‘On the way, he’d seen my Live At The Apollo clip and found my Middleton routine funny. The sheriff was a hardarse who wanted to throw us in prison. But in the end we just got a $650 (£375) citation fine each.’
[My emphasis] Full story at Chortle.co.uk
One wonders if the participants were aware of Maxwell’s understanding of his editorial mission. It’s worth noting there are a number of guidelines (BBC Internal and OFCOM) to protect people from being invited onto UK TV shows under a false premise, particularly if it is for the purposes of entertainment.
Fortunately for people interested in the subject of UFOs it appears ufologist, Darren Perks, used the opportunity to conduct some slightly more orthodox news gathering and journalism. His fascinating and exhaustively detailed account is reprinted in The Daily Mail:
‘We went to Area 51 in Nevada firstly [...]
‘We drove to the nearby township of Rachel which is the closet public residency to Area 51 base and drove down a dirt road to the ‘Back Gate’ of Area 51 officially known as ‘Rachel Gate NT TR Boundary North’.
‘We stopped the tour bus approx 50 metres from the restricted area barriers and started to film.
‘There was no one around, no guards, no vehicles – nothing.
‘We filmed for approximately 30 minutes and tried to call the guards but there was no one there and no sign of them.
‘So we all decided to walk past the barriers onto the restricted area past the security huts and basically onto Area 51. Nothing happened….’
[...]
‘We filmed again for another 30 minutes and even messed around doing a silly dance, but still no guards.
‘Then one of the other stars of the trip pointed out that on looking through one of the security hut windows, she could see the guards all sitting down eating dinner and watching the basketball game on TV. They did nothing.
‘So after a few more minutes and a few more picture taking and filming, one of the crew decided to speak to the guards and knocked on their hut door. All hell broke loose.’
‘The guards rushed out with their weapons and forced us all to lay face down at gunpoint in the tarmac.
‘We were all searched, had our phones, wallets and IDs taken and the film equipment taken. This was at approx 6:15pm.
‘For three hours we lay face down until the Lincoln County Sheriffs arrived on scene.
‘Things then eased off a bit and we were all then taken one by one off the restricted area to the sheriffs who issued us with a ticket and grilled us about what we were doing. We all got fined £375 each.
‘We were told that this incident was so serious that Washington had to call London to advise that 12 ‘Brits’ had just breached security at America’s most top-secret military base and that we all were at one point going to jail for six months.
‘Luckily whoever it was in Washington was kind enough to just fine us.’
[...]
‘As time went on into the evening at approximately 11pm we were allowed to stand around together while things were signed off to let us go.
‘At this point I managed to talk to the guards a bit and one told me how they could ‘make you disappear and your body will never be found’.
[...]
‘He also pointed out that an Apache attack helicopter had been scrambled and had been monitoring us from two miles away and that over 20 military guards had driven up from the actual base to deal with the incident. There were quite a few of them there with guns!
‘One guard I quizzed let slip that there are sensors in the ground that can detect approaching vehicles and walkers up in the nearby mountains, so they know if people are getting too close as they cannot put fences up because the area is so big.
[...]
‘It was probably the most messed-up day of my life so far – but I don’t regret it at all.’
[My emphasis] A fuller version of Darren’s story is reprinted in The Daily Mail here.
“Conspiracy Road Trip”, has already attracted criticism in the UK. It’s hard to fathom why a comedian has been picked to do a job that might be more suited to a journalist, or at least someone able to take the subject seriously. An earlier programme in the series was marred by criticism which described it as being in “bad taste“. The jovial comedian that week turned his talents to the UK’s tragic terror attacks of 2005.
However, Maxwell’s abilities allegedly extend beyond just vacuous self promotion and bragging about how hilarious he is. Chortle.co.uk quotes him as revealing that:
“All UFO encounters come down to first person testimony which is worthless in court, and grainy footage.”.
Presumably this assertion comes after looking into the phenomena in a responsible, honest and impartial manner. Disinfo can’t even begin to estimate how many lifetimes worth of research it must have taken him to verify such a claim.
Unbelievably the fame-hungry joke teller’s other assertion, that it was his amazing comedy which saved the day, is strangely nowhere to be found in Mr Perks’ extensive and detailed report to The Daily Mail. Ironically all we have currently to support that version of events is Maxwell’s own, ”first person testimony”.
