"I feel sure there must be plenty of archaeos who love the 'weird' side of this subject."

Maybe. But Mr Cope recognises there is sometimes great merit in silence - for when asked "What is the strangest experience you've had whilst out walking on the Ridgeway? "

he replied....

"If I answered this question honestly, I'd be ridiculed in the tabloids and gain an even higher profile in Private Eye's Pseuds Corner than I already have. "

and his reward is that he HAS been taken seriously and he was able to write....

"The Modern Antiquarian had a marvellous response from archaeologists, and I was asked to speak at Southhampton, Manchester, Aberdeen and Glasgow universities. Mark Gillings, who recently discovered the Beckhampton Avenue, asked me to sign his copy and said that they even teach my 'Silbury Game' at Leicester. Timothy Darvill, the editor of Antiquity and The Archaeologist, asked me to write for both magazines, and I'm now in constant contact with Aubrey Burl, who recently suggested that I write a book on Callanish. Ronald Hutton of Bristol University is the foremost scholar of pre-Christian Britain, and he called The Modern Antiquarian, "the best popular guide to Neolithic and Bronze Age sites for half a century."

So that's it. He deliberately kept away from stuff that might capsize his project and gained academic respect. Whereas his TMA website....