Sighting record / 1971
Aldridge, Staffordshire. The early hours of 16 August 1971. A call reaches the police. Something bright is hovering over a garage. PC Les Leek arrives with his colleagues and looks up. "It was like a very big bright egg." It makes no sound. It hangs thousands of feet up while a crowd gathers below and patrol cars drive underneath it. Leek reaches for his 35 mm camera. After a long, motionless vigil, the object drifts slowly away towards West Bromwich. The photographs go to the Ministry of Defence. Only one is ever released. The official answer, Leek says, is Venus. He never accepted it.
In 1971 Aldridge sat in Staffordshire. Since 1974 it has been part of the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall. The man at the centre of this case was PC Leslie G. Leek, known as Les, of the Staffordshire County and Stoke-on-Trent Constabulary. By 1994 he was a Chief Inspector with Walsall Police. Twenty-three years on, he was still talking about that August night.