Looking for UFOs with Shaun Ryder

What led you to do a series looking at UFOs?

Shaun Ryder (SR): After doing I’m a Celebrity I got offered a host of different TV shows – mainly reality stuff. I decided that I would really like to do a documentary and that’s when we hit on my love of UFOs – aliens and all things like that.

Where did your love of UFOs come from?

SR: I was a 15-year-old boy, I had just started work as a messenger at the Post Office and I was going to work early one morning to get the 8 o’clock bus to Manchester and it was still dark. I was walking to the bus stop and I saw this thing zooming about in the sky. It was doing things that weren’t really aerodynamically possible or that the laws of physics allowed, just impossible stuff!

What was the most interesting thing you discovered while filming?

SR: When we were filming, we looked at footage of these things that came out of an invisible craft that looked like star ships or Star Wars troopers on pogo sticks. That was great – it really had the wow factor. But the big thing that got me was meeting [alleged alien abductee] Travis Walton because I’d seen the movie based on Travis’s life [Fire In The Sky].

Do you believe in alien abduction?

SR: Yeah, I mean, I believe Travis was abducted absolutely. But you see other people who have claimed that they’ve been abducted and it looks just like they are coming back from a day walking around the Trafford Shopping Centre, all jolly! Travis looked like he had post-traumatic stress or had just walked out of a Vietnam battlefield. He looked grey and it really affected him – you could see that from his interviews.

Is there anyone in the series that you didn’t believe?

SR: During the series, we filmed in a UFO church where they were all praying to a box and putting their cosmic energy in this box. At the end of the day I’m a Catholic and people go to church and they believe that God is in the tabernacle on the altar. Millions of Catholics believe that and go along with that ritual. So I don’t see any difference in this lot going to a UFO church and praying that there is some cosmic energy in that box. Is it my thing? No.

Do you think governments around the world are hiding documents about UFOs?

SR: Yes of course they are; governments are definitely hiding stuff. I mean I know they are. It’s a fact. I think it’s because they really think they are doing us a favour. They think that there will be mass hysteria; people will freak out and it will stop people going and doing their jobs. That’s the only reason I can think of.