This month marks the sixtieth anniversary of Roswell. This, you may recall, is the most infamous UFO incident of all time. A “spaceship” “crashed” in New Mexico, with “four dead alien life-forms” “found” in the “wreckage”. Despite there being, at the time, no internet forums to foment paranoia effectively, the “event” still kick-started a whole new sphere of cultural activity, spanning Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Han Solo, conspiracy theories that encompass the building of the Pyramids and the assassination of J. F. K. and – I guess – Smash mashed potato.

To mark the momentous occasion, last week the Roswell Festival took place in New Mexico, featuring appearances by minor cast members of Deep Space Nine and the band Element 115. The latter promise that they are “the only band with an alien drummer”. They provide no further evidence of this intriguing claim (perhaps safe in the knowledge that, in the case of a drummer being found to be genuinely nonhuman, it would be quite difficult to detect any differences from one who was not).

In turn, all this activity has advanced the plans for the long-anticipated Roswell Theme Park, which will, apparently, include an Alien Abduction Rollercoaster. This ride is an engaging proposition. I devoutly hope that there will be stringent health and safety guidelines during the mandatory “anal probing with thin metal wand” section, and written consent gathered for the “being brutally impregnated with the needle-toothed spawn of the peoples of the Pleiades” bit.

In many ways, this enthusiasm for the idea of alien observation of Earth is baffling. Why are we so excited – 78 per cent of Americans believe in aliens – about the idea of being alien prey? Nearly every way you slice it, human beings don’t come out of the idea of alien contact very well. We’re just parochial, Earth-bound schmucks, sitting here and letting our crops be crushed by intergalactic logos. We look like total losers.

Personally, however, I do understand why people are into it. I used to believe in UFOs. Indeed, adolescent belief in almost anything that smacks of a “cover-up” is mandatory. Consider: you are moving towards adulthood. You are discovering, daily, that your parents – in fact, all of society – have consistently lied to you, and about the most fundamental of issues. There is no Father Christmas! The Tooth Fairy is a rather morbid tin in your mother’s bureau! Bullies aren’t cowards who will stop if you hit them – they merely bring all their mates, and then hit you even harder! And “just being who you really are” is one of most pig-headed and fatal pieces of advice known to man. Given that adolescence is a slaughter-ground for all the ideas that you’d previously held to be true, who would not, in these circumstances, start seeking “the truth” elsewhere? Who would not find an emotional echo in claims that a supposedly benign governing force had been lying?

When I discovered the “Spooky Freaky Whacko Nut-Job” section of my local library, I felt a revelatory rush akin, probably, to Watson and Crick’s joy on discovering the DNA double helix. Suddenly, everything made sense. My feelings of specialness and aloneness were obviously the result of my having been left on this planet, 13 years before, by the people of the Snake Star. And my 3st of excess weight were not due to Somerfield’s “Good Value Cheddar” – they were actually physically manifested telekinetic powers, which would be released by the coming of The Dark Ship, in 2012.

Strangely, this unshakeable belief in extra-terrestrial life dissipated almost exactly at the point that I started to go out, kiss other hopeless adolescents and wear stripey tights. It’s quite hard to maintain belief in having been birthed out of an iridescent metal egg when you spent the night before dancing to the Wonder Stuff’s The Size of a Cow while drunkenly trying to smoke a cigarette the wrong way round.

By my twenties, the matter of secret human-alien contact had become straightforward. The views I formulated then are the ones that I still hold now. Really, the issue of aliens on Earth can revolve around only two possibilities:

1) There aren’t any. Great. No anal probe for me. I feel pleased about the lack of time that I have spent fretting about them.

2) There are aliens, in regular contact with Earth. The Government is covering this up on a massive scale. Well, to be frank, it’s going quite well, so far. It has been dealing with gigantically superior alien life forms for half a century and we haven’t once been vaporised, or had our blood stolen to make intergalactic space-sponge. The American Government’s poor reputation in international affairs is clearly slightly unfair. I feel pleased about having let the Bush and previous Administrations get on with their good work, unhindered by my paranoid and ineffective posting on internet forums. Carry on, chaps.

Ultimately, it’s all by-the-by anyway. Let’s face it: aliens are over. They peaked in the early Nineties. I can’t remember the last time I saw a mutilated cow documentary. No, in 2007 it’s all about global-warming conspiracy theories. My conspiracy theory expert – my dad – assures me that a world-wide consortium of oligarchs has already bought every single piece of real estate above 1,300ft, and will be departing for a secret space station the moment that New York goes under the sea.

Why aren’t there ever any nice conspiracy theories?

Would Ben excise the pain of the PEN?

As my colleague Ben Macintyre wrote on Friday, a drug has been discovered that can erase specific, memories. SuperMac made, as always, an argument both serious and eloquent: human beings must shoulder the burden of their memories, he explained, lest the world start to devalue suffering and pain. On the other hand, I saw his face when the Times team lost the annual PEN quiz last year, and I think that he might make certain exceptions.

Rerun heaven

The raining-off of Wimbledon has been good for one thing: watching clips of old tournaments. On Thursday, understandably desperate to fill the hours left flapping without Wimbledon 2007, the BBC started showing bits of classic grudge matches: Borg/McEnroe, Connors/McEnroe. It was thrilling.

McEnroe played tennis as though he were being portrayed by an angry Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs Kramer (when he’s smashing up the French toast), and Borg had a manner of glacial, distant despair about him, as if he dreamt of suddenly dying on the court and levitating, making the sign of the cross at everyone more fleshy and emotional than him.

Given that in its report last week the BBC admitted that it was going to have to show more repeats, why doesn’t it use the otherwise useless BBC Three to repeat old, pivotal, sporting events? Cup finals, Grand Nationals, World Cups, Olympics, things featuring Nadia Comaneci?

I hate sport, and even I would watch that. Imagine a world where men could ring each other to ask: “Fancy watching all of the 1982 World Cup this week?” They’d be so happy. It would almost make up for feminism.

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