As Swirled News reported back in the summer, planker Matthew Williams and friends created a formation for the ‘News of the World’ UK tabloid. After a long silence, the resultant and contemptuously predictable article has finally appeared, as ANDY THOMAS reports…


Yes, two and a half months after some of the Swirled News team watched Matthew and his bunch of plankers cavorting for cameras near Silbury Hill (see our August story), the article finally appeared in the 4th November ‘News of the World’ colour supplement ‘Sunday’.

Entirely a hymn to Williams, with no balancing remarks or information from any research groups, it is, of course, a tissue of misleading sweeping sceptical comments from the plankmeister, shown with photos of the said plankers planking away. The journalistic style is of the frothy, cynically juvenile tabloid genre seen so many times before.

The formation (a ‘Moiré’-style mandala of diamonds) is not indecent as man-made efforts go, but hardly dazzles or touches the soul, a point thrown into sharp relief by the adjacent photo display of the more unexplained masterpieces in an accompanying side box.

The accuracy of the piece can be determined by the remark made beneath a photo of this year’s spectacular Milk Hill spiral which describes it as “man-made” without any qualification or evidence. Seeing as even Williams hasn’t claimed it, this is presumably journalistic invention on the part of the author or some bored sub-editor.

Other comments reveal the true level of accuracy and integrity being employed. At one point, the author, one Emma Manston, writing in an on-the-spot style describing the demonstration formation being created, states: “It’s nearly pitch black, but we can’t even light a cigarette, as any chink of light could give us away”. Given that a) the formation was made with the farmer’s permission in broad daylight and in full view of the Silbury car park, as we at Swirled News witnessed for ourselves, and that b) the photographs with the article clearly show this, one presumes this “pitch-black” talk is more journalistic fantasy concocted to make the story seem far more subversive and exciting than it really is.

Smoking cigarettes in a ripe field in high summer is a really stupid thing to do anyway.

In short, yet another hackneyed and meaningless ‘demonstration’ of ‘human skills’, spiced with fictional frills. Yawn and turn the page. And then read a nasty piece sneering at a one-time actress/model who has put on a little weight these days and realise what context this article exists in.