On Tuesday we were privileged to hear Robbie Williams and Jon Ronson Journey to the Other Side, an ambiguous title for a programme in which the troubled pop star (©) described his latest bid for inner peace – the paranormal. Or was the Other Side the people he met along the way, the strange beings he found at a UFO conference in sleazy Laughlin, Nevada?

Cruelly, Radio 4 had scheduled it in the 6.30pm drivetime comedy slot, which made one wonder – was it a hoax, with a Robbie soundalike? Paranormal stuff does tend to make you paranoid.

But no, Laughlin exists, and two of the people they met there have websites to call their own. One is Dr Roger Leir, a surgeon who says he has extracted 15 items of alien metal from human abductees but had brought none of them to the conference to show off. The night before Robbie and Ronson arrived in Laughlin there had apparently been a fight between two alien beings that had yielded a vial of alien blood that was in Leir’s possession. He denied this, laughing avuncularly. He did, though, have a scale from a 7ft alien that someone had disturbed in their kitchen. Only it might have also been a moth’s wing.

The other delegate was Ann Andrews, whose son Jason is an Indigo Child, an alien sent to Earth in human guise. She reminded Robbie of his mum. “You know, you look a lot like Robbie Williams,” she said. She’s a big fan.

Robbie being Robbie, while he declared himself totally open to believing everything he was told, he’d brought along someone to be his nominated cynic. He was called Brandon. When Andrews showed photographs she had taken of aliens that were blurred because she had taken them on a disposable camera, Brandon asked why she didn’t buy a better camera.

It was easy to laugh, but at the heart there was a touching portrait of a man who has tried it all and is still unfulfilled. “Every time I meet charlatans,” he said. “I think: ‘I thought you knew the truth, but you’re just a nutter’.” He’ll keep searching. We wish him well.

Yesterday Radio 5 Live gave listeners a unique insight into the Chinese mentality, ahead of the Beijing Olympics, by sending its Breakfast team on a visit behind the Bamboo Curtain, talking to the Sino shakers and movers in Chinatown, London W1. What next – getting the inside track on the race for the US presidency by chatting to a Yank here on holiday?

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