The source recording is a YouTube video, and the start of the programme is missing,
Chorley: …to devise some way that we cross the [tram] lines, so with the baseball cap with a little piece of wire on like the sight on a gun, you would pick up in the dark a cottage or a tree, walk towards it – I used to go behind, he’d [Bower] wear the cap, I’d walk behind him flattening the corn down, with the stick.
Interviewer: They are so perfectly round, too. How did you manage that?
Bower: Our stick is four feet long, a piece of 2-by-1, with a rope rein on it. You put your right foot on the stick and you walk forward with it pushing the corn down as you go.
Interviewer: OK, but then you get a circle like that [perfectly round]?
Bower: You start off with the first one, David can stand on the end of the stick on the right-hand side and I would go around so it didn’t move. Consequently then, you’ve made the first circle. Then you move to the edge of the corn that’s still standing, go around again, and in ten minutes you’ve got a circle 80 to 90 feet wide.
Interviewer: Tell me about your first night. You went out in a beautiful summer night and then what?
Chorley: The first night we ever did one?
Interviewer: The first night you ever did it.
Chorley: Erm, the first night we ever did it was quite scary, because naturally, never having done it before, and in a farmer’s field, we got in and we got out as quick as we could, and that’s the truth about the first night. Because that would have only have been about, that one I reckon was only about forty foot across. In a place called the Strawberry field, and that was the first one, don’t matter what people say, about going through the years, they’ve seen them 1940, that was the first one ever in England. The rest were storm damage.
Interviewer: And how was your reaction when you read it in the papers?
Chorley: No, we didn’t read that one. We didn’t ready about that one...
Interviewer: [interrupting] Why?
Chorley: Because...
Bower: [Interrupting] It was three years later that we first saw the first [news] paper report and we were highly delighted to see something in the paper about something we...
Interviewer: [Interrupting] A big laugh, probably, yes!
Chorley: [interrupting] (unclear)... to give up.
Bower: But the biggest laugh was to come when all the so-called scientists were being formed [sic]. Circle scientists they were calling themselves [sic] and they created their own language. Language that we’ve never heard of before... plasma vortexes and, er... I can’t remember the names. I’ve looked in the dictionary to see if they’re there but they’re not. They concocted their own language to use. And they’ve, er, they’ve bluffed the public. They’re wonderful people, you see, they’re clever people.
Interviewer: Did your wife know about it?
Bower: She didn’t know a thing about it. I used to go out with David every Friday evening...
Interviewer: [Interrupting, speaking to someone in the audience] Mrs Bower - you are there on the first row. You didn’t know anything when [he was] going out during the night?
Mrs Bower: No, well then they only went out on Friday evening, and it was the boys’ night out.
Chorley: A wet [drinking] night out for the boys.
Mrs Bower: It must have been growing quite significantly because I began to realise that the mileage on the car [laughs] was... my share of the...
Interviewer: [Interrupting] You checked the mileage!?
Chorley: No, no...
Mrs Bower: Yes I did!
Interviewer: Every week!?
Mrs Bower: Can you tell me another woman who wouldn’t?
Interviewer: I beg your pardon?
Mrs Bower: Can you tell me another woman who wouldn’t?
Interviewer: Oh! [hesitates] ... but let’s drop this subject because we discussed that last week, so...
Mrs Bower: Yes, well, you see I let it go for a little while and I used to check the mileage on the car when I got out of it, and the next time I got in, and it came to me that my share of the mileage on the car was significantly small. So I confronted my husband with it and I said the next time the car goes in for servicing I think David should pay his share of it! So of course my husband then realised there was something wrong. [Laughs] So he said, ‘Oh, well I’ll prove to you what’s been going on,’ so he went...
Interviewer: [Interrupting] To what do you refer?
Mrs Bower: Well, I thought...
Interviewer: You were suspicious...
Mrs Bower: Well, yes, in a sense, I mean... I don’t think David would mind, because it’s been in the newspaper already... I mean, he does like ladies’ company, let’s put it that way. [Laughter]
Interviewer: OK, great.
Mrs Bower: And if you keep company with a gentleman for - or a lady keeps company with another lady, she probably begins to... take on the same traits. So I thought, well, there could be something in it, but knowing my husband, I didn’t really think there was.
Interviewer: And when you finally discovered what was going on...
Mrs Bower: My husband presented me with, er, newspaper cuttings that he’d kept over all this time, photographs that had been taken, and I looked through them and after a while, I said, ‘Well what do a load of old photographs prove? They don’t prove anything at all.’ So then he [said] ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ I said, ‘I want to know the location of the next circle, when it’s going to take place. When you’ve completed it I’d like to see it please, because I want to know what pattern you’re going to do’.
Interviewer: [Turning to Bower] I have a question. How is it possible that you didn’t let... [correcting himself] or leave any traces?
Bower: We were very careful over that.
Interviewer: But how did you manage that?
Chorley: But you can... you can because, you see, you can walk down the... [explaining] everyone understands ‘tramlines’, where the farmer goes for the crops, you know, spraying the crops with...
Interviewer: Yeah.
Chorley: You walk down the tramlines, we devised a way, if you take one big step into the corn - it only makes you one footprint, not necessarily one foot mark, you just brush it down, it’s just bunny steps [?] - then we would walk on in purposely, make the first ring, so that you’ve erased your foot steps at the back [ie, behind you]. Your first ring would be only about three foot, maybe, from the tramline.
Interviewer: And how many circles and things you have made?
Bower: 25 to 30 every summer.
Interviewer: [taken aback] ... Jeez... that’s enormous...
Bower: [Interrupting] That’s a period of about...
Interviewer: [Interrupting] And no one discovered you during your work?
Chorley: Never! Not [in] 13 years. never.
Bower: No, no.
Chorley: We’ve had a few near misses, but never.
Interviewer: And it was only during the night?
Chorley: Yes, and...
Bower: It’s got to be dark, otherwise we’d be seen in there.
Interviewer: And you worked with lamps?
Bower: No! No, no, no...
Chorley: No, nothing. One torch that’s got a little red...
Interviewer: Very sensitive!
Bower: There was one or two nights when it was so dark we couldn’t see our feet and we had to discontinue that, so, but I mean, when your eyes get accustomed to the darkness, it’s surprising how much you can see...
Chorley: Summer light, summer light.
Interviewer: Yeah, of course. [Looks into audience and addresses an audience member in Dutch]
Audience member: [Speaks in Dutch]
Interviewer: [Translating, speaking to Chorley] He says it’s almost impossible to make more than 600 circles.
Chorley: Because, during the first period from about 1978, when we first started making them, up till about ’87, we had the field to ourselves. There were only, er, 20, 30 [being made per year]... when we met [people from] every country in the world, on the top of a place called Cheesefoot Head near Winchester, we met your country, we met Germans, Italians, Japanese, Americans. Of course, people coming up there, a few young bucks [lads] about 35 [years old], going back - they’re going to put one down [in their country], aren’t they? Great Fun! And that’s how they appeared.
Bower: They’ve just started in Germany now. The Germans have been over to look at them. They go back and do them themselves.
Interviewer: Why did you... er... say to each other, OK, we’ll stop?
Chorley: In the end we felt that, er, it was involving scientists who would be better, well better to do something that was worthwhile - and also, last week, in England, it was, er, Dr Terence Meaden, who’s a meteorological expert, was going to [corrects himself] didn’t say he was going to, but approached the government for money to go into the project. We thought, once you get into this political field, then you’re in hot water. And also, the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles, er, wished to be informed about what was happening, and when you get into that sort of world, I mean, we said, this is enough!
Interviewer: You never felt sorry for all the scientists who...
Bower: No.
Chorley: Well, no, because...
Bower: It’s a good laugh. It’s a good laugh, isn’t it?
Chorley: Well, not only that, because it was an art form, and people were enjoying them as an art form. What was better than a couple of artists having a canvass - a 50-acre field - with people up top looking? They all said they were things of beauty, which they were. They were modern art.
Bower: We signed them, ‘Doug and Dave’. Two Ds. All this year’s have got two Ds on them: Doug and Dave.
Interviewer: Doug and Dave.
Chorley: And they’re still...
Interviewer: And they didn’t discover that...
Bower: They said they were two half-circles.
Interviewer: You’re great, it was a wonderful joke, and, er, I wish you a good return to Southampton. Thank you very much.
Chorley: …to devise some way that we cross the [tram] lines, so with the baseball cap with a little piece of wire on like the sight on a gun, you would pick up in the dark a cottage or a tree, walk towards it – I used to go behind, he’d [Bower] wear the cap, I’d walk behind him flattening the corn down, with the stick.
Interviewer: They are so perfectly round, too. How did you manage that?
Bower: Our stick is four feet long, a piece of 2-by-1, with a rope rein on it. You put your right foot on the stick and you walk forward with it pushing the corn down as you go.
Interviewer: OK, but then you get a circle like that [perfectly round]?
Bower: You start off with the first one, David can stand on the end of the stick on the right-hand side and I would go around so it didn’t move. Consequently then, you’ve made the first circle. Then you move to the edge of the corn that’s still standing, go around again, and in ten minutes you’ve got a circle 80 to 90 feet wide.
Interviewer: Tell me about your first night. You went out in a beautiful summer night and then what?
Chorley: The first night we ever did one?
Interviewer: The first night you ever did it.
Chorley: Erm, the first night we ever did it was quite scary, because naturally, never having done it before, and in a farmer’s field, we got in and we got out as quick as we could, and that’s the truth about the first night. Because that would have only have been about, that one I reckon was only about forty foot across. In a place called the Strawberry field, and that was the first one, don’t matter what people say, about going through the years, they’ve seen them 1940, that was the first one ever in England. The rest were storm damage.
Interviewer: And how was your reaction when you read it in the papers?
Chorley: No, we didn’t read that one. We didn’t ready about that one...
Interviewer: [interrupting] Why?
Chorley: Because...
Bower: [Interrupting] It was three years later that we first saw the first [news] paper report and we were highly delighted to see something in the paper about something we...
Interviewer: [Interrupting] A big laugh, probably, yes!
Chorley: [interrupting] (unclear)... to give up.
Bower: But the biggest laugh was to come when all the so-called scientists were being formed [sic]. Circle scientists they were calling themselves [sic] and they created their own language. Language that we’ve never heard of before... plasma vortexes and, er... I can’t remember the names. I’ve looked in the dictionary to see if they’re there but they’re not. They concocted their own language to use. And they’ve, er, they’ve bluffed the public. They’re wonderful people, you see, they’re clever people.
Interviewer: Did your wife know about it?
Bower: She didn’t know a thing about it. I used to go out with David every Friday evening...
Interviewer: [Interrupting, speaking to someone in the audience] Mrs Bower - you are there on the first row. You didn’t know anything when [he was] going out during the night?
Mrs Bower: No, well then they only went out on Friday evening, and it was the boys’ night out.
Chorley: A wet [drinking] night out for the boys.
Mrs Bower: It must have been growing quite significantly because I began to realise that the mileage on the car [laughs] was... my share of the...
Interviewer: [Interrupting] You checked the mileage!?
Chorley: No, no...
Mrs Bower: Yes I did!
Interviewer: Every week!?
Mrs Bower: Can you tell me another woman who wouldn’t?
Interviewer: I beg your pardon?
Mrs Bower: Can you tell me another woman who wouldn’t?
Interviewer: Oh! [hesitates] ... but let’s drop this subject because we discussed that last week, so...
Mrs Bower: Yes, well, you see I let it go for a little while and I used to check the mileage on the car when I got out of it, and the next time I got in, and it came to me that my share of the mileage on the car was significantly small. So I confronted my husband with it and I said the next time the car goes in for servicing I think David should pay his share of it! So of course my husband then realised there was something wrong. [Laughs] So he said, ‘Oh, well I’ll prove to you what’s been going on,’ so he went...
Interviewer: [Interrupting] To what do you refer?
Mrs Bower: Well, I thought...
Interviewer: You were suspicious...
Mrs Bower: Well, yes, in a sense, I mean... I don’t think David would mind, because it’s been in the newspaper already... I mean, he does like ladies’ company, let’s put it that way. [Laughter]
Interviewer: OK, great.
Mrs Bower: And if you keep company with a gentleman for - or a lady keeps company with another lady, she probably begins to... take on the same traits. So I thought, well, there could be something in it, but knowing my husband, I didn’t really think there was.
Interviewer: And when you finally discovered what was going on...
Mrs Bower: My husband presented me with, er, newspaper cuttings that he’d kept over all this time, photographs that had been taken, and I looked through them and after a while, I said, ‘Well what do a load of old photographs prove? They don’t prove anything at all.’ So then he [said] ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ I said, ‘I want to know the location of the next circle, when it’s going to take place. When you’ve completed it I’d like to see it please, because I want to know what pattern you’re going to do’.
Interviewer: [Turning to Bower] I have a question. How is it possible that you didn’t let... [correcting himself] or leave any traces?
Bower: We were very careful over that.
Interviewer: But how did you manage that?
Chorley: But you can... you can because, you see, you can walk down the... [explaining] everyone understands ‘tramlines’, where the farmer goes for the crops, you know, spraying the crops with...
Interviewer: Yeah.
Chorley: You walk down the tramlines, we devised a way, if you take one big step into the corn - it only makes you one footprint, not necessarily one foot mark, you just brush it down, it’s just bunny steps [?] - then we would walk on in purposely, make the first ring, so that you’ve erased your foot steps at the back [ie, behind you]. Your first ring would be only about three foot, maybe, from the tramline.
Interviewer: And how many circles and things you have made?
Bower: 25 to 30 every summer.
Interviewer: [taken aback] ... Jeez... that’s enormous...
Bower: [Interrupting] That’s a period of about...
Interviewer: [Interrupting] And no one discovered you during your work?
Chorley: Never! Not [in] 13 years. never.
Bower: No, no.
Chorley: We’ve had a few near misses, but never.
Interviewer: And it was only during the night?
Chorley: Yes, and...
Bower: It’s got to be dark, otherwise we’d be seen in there.
Interviewer: And you worked with lamps?
Bower: No! No, no, no...
Chorley: No, nothing. One torch that’s got a little red...
Interviewer: Very sensitive!
Bower: There was one or two nights when it was so dark we couldn’t see our feet and we had to discontinue that, so, but I mean, when your eyes get accustomed to the darkness, it’s surprising how much you can see...
Chorley: Summer light, summer light.
Interviewer: Yeah, of course. [Looks into audience and addresses an audience member in Dutch]
Audience member: [Speaks in Dutch]
Interviewer: [Translating, speaking to Chorley] He says it’s almost impossible to make more than 600 circles.
Chorley: Because, during the first period from about 1978, when we first started making them, up till about ’87, we had the field to ourselves. There were only, er, 20, 30 [being made per year]... when we met [people from] every country in the world, on the top of a place called Cheesefoot Head near Winchester, we met your country, we met Germans, Italians, Japanese, Americans. Of course, people coming up there, a few young bucks [lads] about 35 [years old], going back - they’re going to put one down [in their country], aren’t they? Great Fun! And that’s how they appeared.
Bower: They’ve just started in Germany now. The Germans have been over to look at them. They go back and do them themselves.
Interviewer: Why did you... er... say to each other, OK, we’ll stop?
Chorley: In the end we felt that, er, it was involving scientists who would be better, well better to do something that was worthwhile - and also, last week, in England, it was, er, Dr Terence Meaden, who’s a meteorological expert, was going to [corrects himself] didn’t say he was going to, but approached the government for money to go into the project. We thought, once you get into this political field, then you’re in hot water. And also, the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles, er, wished to be informed about what was happening, and when you get into that sort of world, I mean, we said, this is enough!
Interviewer: You never felt sorry for all the scientists who...
Bower: No.
Chorley: Well, no, because...
Bower: It’s a good laugh. It’s a good laugh, isn’t it?
Chorley: Well, not only that, because it was an art form, and people were enjoying them as an art form. What was better than a couple of artists having a canvass - a 50-acre field - with people up top looking? They all said they were things of beauty, which they were. They were modern art.
Bower: We signed them, ‘Doug and Dave’. Two Ds. All this year’s have got two Ds on them: Doug and Dave.
Interviewer: Doug and Dave.
Chorley: And they’re still...
Interviewer: And they didn’t discover that...
Bower: They said they were two half-circles.
Interviewer: You’re great, it was a wonderful joke, and, er, I wish you a good return to Southampton. Thank you very much.