BRILLIANT lights seen hovering above Rivington's terraced garden really WERE UFOs, the BEN can reveal exclusively today.

They were Unidentified Filming Objects!

Local people bombarded the Evening News with calls to say the Martians were taking a night-time peek at Lord Leverhulme's famous terraced gardens on the slopes of Rivington Pike on Monday and Tuesday night .

The story was confirmed by Blackrod man Brian Johnson when he got out his powerful binoculars and zoomed in on the pigeon tower landmark.

Through the lenses, he could clearly see powerful lights shining down on the scene from about twice the height of the stone tower. And they stayed there well into the wee small hours.

But the visitors from outer space turned out to be nothing more than visitors from out o'Manchester.

West Pennines management chief Phil Luff threw light on the mystery. "It was a TV crew using the tower for a film scene. They often use locations in the Rivington area for filming, but I'm nore sure what programme this was intended for."

A spokesman at Granada Television's Manchester headquarters confirmed that a crew had been filming at the pigeon tower. But he said he could not say which programme the shots will be slotted into.

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