If you saw a UFO, what would you do?

Glenys Messiah from Frenchs Forest, a suburb of Sydney, told her UFO-sighting story on a 1980 episode of The Mike Walsh Show. Alongside interviews with stars from Australia and abroad, the show regularly featured offbeat segments like this one, about ordinary people who do – or see – extraordinary things.

Guest host Ita Buttrose, at her most icily immaculate in sapphire blue shoulder pads, scarcely bothers to conceal her scepticism, and the audience even less so. ‘A lot of people would change their attitude if they saw one,’ says a defiant Messiah.

Segments like this one foreshadowed the excesses of American chat shows in the 1990s, where reactive audiences were baited with sensational detail – which in turn prefigured today’s internet culture.