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World’, the story revealed how two Southampton men in their sixties, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, were claiming to have started the entire phenomenon, making circles intended to suggest UFO landing marks, after their Friday night sessions in the pub. The story ran across several pages and included details of a 'sting' that had been perpetrated on Pat Delgado. With the connivance of the paper, the two had made a large pictogram, much in the style of the season's 'insectograms', which Today had then informed Delgado about, inviting him to visit it. He had not only authenticated it, but described it as 'the most wonderful moment of my research’. Later, he was confronted with the news that it had been constructed by Bower and Chorley, witnessed by the reporter, Graham Brough, and the paper's photographer. Brough came to Delgado's house bringing Bower and Chorley with him. They described how, over many years, they had made as many as 20 or 30 circles a year, mainly in Hampshire. As reported, Delgado's initial reaction was a complete acknowledgement of the claims that Bower and Chorley were making. He subsequently modified this, but the impression conveyed was one of the ‘founding fathers' of cerealogy effectively writing off the whole phenomenon. It quickly became the case that Bower and Chorley, despite their actual claims, were being described as responsible for all the circles. There were many obvious problems with the idea that they could have been responsible for all the circles, not least the circles which had been found outside the United Kingdom, and the eye-witness When examined more closely their story was fairly specific, both in terms of the total number of circles they had made and the location of these events. They gave various dates for their first circle, initially reported as 1981, later amended to 1978, and then 1975. They began by using the iron bar from the back door of Chorley's picture framing shop, working on their hands and knees, later devising the 'stalk stomper' described in Chapter 4. Many of their early circles went undiscovered and, when the circles failed to get the publicity that they had anticipated, they began to focus on locations where they could guarantee that someone would see them. In 1980 they chose a site below the White Horse at Bratton and were rewarded with a report in the Wiltshire Times. The following year the Punchbowl site at Cheesefoot Head was planted with crops and they were able to leave circles there. As the subject took off, they maintained some contact with circles’ researchers, Bower claiming to have rung Andrews the morning after making circles to tell him of their ‘discovery’. They often chose sites that they knew had associations with UFOs, such as Cley Hill near Warminster. The idea that the circles were products of a higher intelligence amused They followed the development of Dr Meaden's ideas, deliberately planning features that they thought would confound him, such as a ring around the circle, or the circles with right-angle lays. In 1990, they designed the pictogram, based on a modernist painting, assuming that the non-circular features would be impossible to reconcile with a meteorological theory. accounts of circles forming. them considerably.