“It’s been responsible for more disappearances than the Bermuda Triangle,” claims top conspiracy theorist Franklin Klench at the launch of his new book, Mysteries of The Bermondsey Triangle. “This anomaly lies in the heart of our capital city, yet the authorities deny its very existence!” The thirty four year old’s self-published tome claims that, over a period of more than a century, hundreds of people, buses, cars and even trains, have vanished without trace in an area of Bermondsey in South London demarcated by triangle drawn between Bermondsey tube station in the North, Elephant and Castle stations in the West and South Bermondsey rail station in the South. “There are so many well-documented incidents – back in 1965, for instance, a Southwark-bound bus travelling through this devil’s triangle vanished somewhere between Old Jamaica Road and Grange Road,” he told members of the press gathered in the upstairs function room of the Boar’s Sack pub on the Yalding Road in Bermondsey. “It was seen driving past the bus stop before the junction with Spa Road without stopping, even though it wasn’t full, but passengers waiting for it at the next scheduled stop at the Enid Street cross roads were left standing for over an hour when it didn’t turn up there!” Mysterious disappearances of public transport aren’t the only phenomena to occur in the triangle, with many travellers Also experiencing ‘lost time’: periods of time of which they have no recollection. “Back in 1982 a tube train travelling between Elephant and Castle and Bermondsey tube stations took over two hours to make what was normally a five minute journey,” Klench claimed. “Neither the driver nor the passengers could account for the lost hours, all they could remember was darkness and tunnels.”

Most sensationally, Mysteries of The Bermondsey Triangle claims to explain the disappearance of John Noakes, the much loved former presenter of the BBC’s flagship children’s programme Blue Peter in the 1970s. “The fate of the cheeky cheery presenter has perplexed the minds of those of us who grew up with him scaling Nelson’s Column, jumping out of aeroplanes and being crapped on by elephants,” explained Klench. “Apart from his all-too brief sojourn as host of Go With Noakes, his adult-orientated follow-up to Blue Peter, in which he made weekly attempts to persuade the most attractive models, actresses and general crumpet ‘go’ with him every week, nothing has been heard of this intrepid TV adventurer.” According to Klench, Noakes embarked on a solo round-the-world yacht voyage after being spurned by long-time unrequited object of infatuation Irene Handel in the last episode of Go With Noakes. She apparently opted to go with a hoover attachment instead. Shortly after setting sail from the South Bank, Noakes vanished – despite exhaustive searches, no trace of him or his boat have ever been found.

“One popular theory to explain his disappearance was that he ran aground on a woman named Rita in Streatham shortly after setting sail. After several days foundering on her ample breasts, he apparently managed to swim southwards and was apparently spotted in the saloon bar of a pub in Tooting, where he was rescued by a group of passing Russian sailors,” says the conspiracy theorist. “Despite occasional unconfirmed sightings in pubs as far afield as Spitalfields and even Woolwich, there has been no concrete information as to his fate. However, whilst researching this book, I learned that the last confirmed sighting of his boat was sailing into Jamaica Wharf in Bermondsey. I found a couple of people who saw him crossing the Jamaica Road and going down St James Road before going into a notoriously rough pub in Dockley Road. After that – nothing! Another victim of the Bermondsey Triangle!”

Despite Klench’s enthusiastic performance during the book launch, many of the attending press representatives were left unimpressed by his theories. “His claims that the authorities refusal to mount a search for the missing John Noakes as part of an official cover-up of the so-called Bermondsey Triangle are simply not true,” observed Jerome Flexx of Your Conspiracy Weekly. “The BBC did, allegedly, make some attempts to locate him Most notably when his Blue Peter successor Peter Duncan was despatched to Luton in an episode of his post-Blue Peter series, Duncan Dares.” Klench responded angrily to his fellow conspiracist’s criticism, stating that he was well aware of the Duncan Dares episode in question. “It was sandwiched between the episode where he dared to appear in a porn film, and the one in which he dared to stick his todger between the jaws of a man-eating tiger,” he retorted. “Significantly, the programme followed Duncan as he trawled the seedy bars and back streets of Luton, not Bermondsey, in search of the lost Noakes. It was clearly an attempt to divert attention away from the truth – that Noakes had vanished in the Bermondsey Triangle!” Despite suffering dysentery (two buckets), being bitten by wild prostitutes and being chased out of a gay club by a band of semi-naked savages, Duncan could find no trace of his predecessor.

Danny Bamsey, editor of the West London Flying Saucer Review, also poured cold water on Klench’s theories, pointing out that this wasn’t the first time that he had concocted bizarre conspiracy theories around 1970s BBC children’s programmes and their presenters. “Some of us recall that story he sold to the Barnet Weekly Advertiser and Haberdasher’s Gazette a couple of years ago, claiming that Animal Magic presenter Johnny Morris was on the list of British sympathisers Rudolf Hess had when he parachuted into Scotland in 1941,” the Ufologist muses. “Then there was his claim that the infamous wrecking of the Blue Peter garden was down to the followers of the jackal-headed Ancient Egyptian god Anubis, who mistook the cast bronze head of deceased Blue Peter dog Petra for an altar to their deity. Upon realising their mistake, they allegedly attempted to destroy what they saw as a blasphemous parody of their deity.” Most crucially, Bamsey is critical of Klench’s failure, in his latest book, to consider any extraterrestrial explanation for the mysterious events in the Bermondsey Triangle. “Typically for a South Londoner, he just goes on about ley-lines, ancient druid sites buried under tube stations and all that nonsense,” he says. “He completely ignores the established fact that London has become an epicentre for flying saucer activity. It is surely no coincidence that the so-called Bermondsey Triangle is in close proximity to Battersea Power Station? The investigations of the West London Flying Saucer Group have established beyond any doubt that this ancient monument was constructed as a space port for alien visitors – the connections are obvious!”

When contacted by The Sleaze, the BBC denied that John Noakes had ever been missing, pointing out that he was alive and well and had made several TV appearances in recent years on programmes such as The Weakest Link. They also denied any knowledge of any episodes of Duncan Dares involving porn films, prostitutes, gay clubs or tigers. Klench reacted with fury when we put these facts to him. “Look, I now I saw those programmes! They might want to deny their existence now, but they were definitely shown!” he shouted at us, adding, as he stormed out of the press launch, that it was all part of the official cover up of the Bermondsey Triangle. “Nobody’s fooled by their fake John Noakes any more than we’re fooled by that fake Paul McCartney – the real one disappeared in the Devil’s Triangle of South London in 1966!”