Police have revealed that the man recently arrested for attempting to murder a top London banker is leading cerealogist and conspiracy theorist Frank Dibble. “Mr Dibble has a clear history of mental illness – at the time of the current incident he was still on bail, having been arrested last year in connection with the destruction of several cereal crops by fire at a Hampshire agricultural research centre, resulting in millions of pounds-worth of damage,” a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police confirmed yesterday. “It seems that the attack on Sir Bruce Fannington, chairman of one of the UK’s biggest investment banks, was related to Dibble’s apparent cereal obsession: his bank was one of the major investors in the research centre, which was developing new strains of disease and insect resistant cereals for the developing world.” Fannington survived the frenzied knife attack outside his bank’s London headquarters after Dibble repeatedly aimed his blows at the right side of the banker’s chest, thereby missing his heart completely. “He seemed surprised that Fannington wasn’t dead,” recalled Sally Wigglesome, an eyewitness to the attack, in an interview with top tabloid the Daily Norks. “Whilst the paramedic were attending to his victim, he kept asking the police who had arrested him, ‘Why isn’t he dead? I stabbed him through the heart – he’s one of them, it should have killed him!’, except he didn’t get the guy in the heart – he seemed to deliberately miss it!”

However, some of Dibble’s fellow conspiracy theorists believe the reasons for the cerealogist’s bizarre actions can be traced back to 2007, when he rocked the paranormal world by sensationally claiming that the crop circles regularly seen in Southern England are part of a sinister conspiracy between the British government and aliens. He told that year’s annual paranormal enthusiasts convention – Weirdcon – in Birmingham that he had evidence from environmental groups that the fields the circles appeared in had all been planted with genetically modified cereal. “These cereals have been specially developed in secret government laboratories and are genetically pre-programmed to collapse into certain complex patterns upon receipt of a signal broadcast from beyond the Earth’s atmosphere,” he claimed. “The predetermined patterns are a message to the aliens assisting in the genetic modification programme that the experiment has been successful!” He believed that the mysterious signal triggering the circles’ formation emanated from a planet occupying the same orbit as our own, but which was always on the opposite side of the Sun to us – a Counter-Earth – and is bounced off of a secret relay station on the moon. “It is the complete mirror image of Earth – a planet governed by pure evil,” he explained. “The relay station was stumbled on by an Apollo moon mission which was captured by the aliens – the astronauts were replaced by their evil doubles, who came to our earth and infiltrated the upper echelons of NASA, which has been in cahoots with them ever since!”

According to Dibble, the Counter-Earth was drowning in its own evil and rapidly becoming uninhabitable and its denizens were seeking a new home planet – our Earth. “They’ve already replaced many of our own leaders,” he told delegates to the Weirdcon. “I’ve seen X-rays of Gordon Brown and David Cameron taken during routine medicals which show that organs are transposed, their hearts on the right instead of the left! They’re mirror people!” In order to survive, the mirror people also needed mirror food – foodstuffs with all of their molecules transposed – this is the true purpose of genetically modified plants. However, Dibble believed that the ultimate aim of the genetic experiments might be even more sinister: “They may be aiming to convert us all to mirror people, our molecular structures reversed by ingesting their genetically modified food. Before you know it, we’ll be welcoming their evil invasion force with open arms – they won’t have to conquer us, we’ll simply invite them in!” He argued that there is only one way to fight back – the destruction of crop circles wherever they appear. “Trample the bloody things down! Plough them up! Burn the crops! If they can’t see the messages, they’ll believe their plan is failing – its our only hope!”

Jim Thropp, deputy editor of Conspiracies Today magazine believes that the events of the past few years would appear to have vindicated Dibble’s claims. “How else can we credibly explain things like the financial crash, the rise in hate crimes against minorities such as the disabled or the increasing corruption in public and corporate life?” he asks in the latest issue. “The world has, quite literally, taken an evil turn and it is down to the fact that these mirror people have seized control of our political and financial institutions and are reconstructing the world in their own evil image.” Thropp points to the current government’s systematic dismantling of the welfare state, in particular Work and Pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smith’s ‘punishing’ of the poor by cutting benefits and demonising the unemployed, and the destruction of the state education system by bonkers Education Secretary Michael Gove. “These actions are clearly the work of truly evil individuals – I refuse to believe that any human being with a conscience could take responsibility for such wickedness,” he argues. “Moreover, are we really to believe that the Ian Duncan Smith who terrorises the disabled, impoverishes the needy, driving them to food banks in order to survive, is the same man as that mild-mannered non-entity who was so ineffective the Tories wouldn’t let him lead them to defeat, replacing him with Michael Howard, instead? It’s the same with Michael Gove – transformed from buffoonish journalist into wild-eyed hammer of state schools. It’s clear that both of them have been replaced by mirror men.”

According to Thropp, it isn’t just politicians and bankers who have been replaced by the mirror people, with the conspiracy theorist claiming that the increasing decadent behaviour of celebrities is also down to the evil invaders. “Is it any coincidence that the majority of celebrities currently accused of sexual misconduct were at the height of their fame in the seventies, the decade when the mirror people first started coming here?” he writes in Conspiracies Today. “Just look at Jimmy Savile – by all accounts we was a paragon of virtue until the seventies, when he suddenly became sex-crazed and started indulging in all forms of debauchery known to man! It was the same with Stuart Hall – from sports journalist to sex fiend with the dawn of the seventies! You can’t tell me that being given the presenter’s job on It’s a Knockout alone was enough to turn him to depravity!” The police have declined to comment on Thropp’s speculations, but have pointed out that Dibble’s cereal aversion seems to date back to a childhood trauma, when he witnessed his parents’ death in a freak combine harvester accident, rather than to any invasions from a counter-Earth.