(Original headline: US move was beginning of a slide to obscurity )
A chance sighting of one of the earliest recorded crop circles in a West field in 1983 sparked a 22-year obsession for Colin Andrews, and led him on a journey from ordinary local government worker to American-based deep thinker.
He gave up his job to devote his life to solving the puzzle, and as the number and complexity of the circles grew, Mr Andrews became the leading authority on the mystery, writing the first books on the subject and forming the first research organisation - the Circles Phenomenon Research International (CPRI).
By the heady summer of 1990 - the year crop circles went from a West Country phenomenon to a global wonder - Mr Andrews was at the center of the whirlwind.
He headed up the massive - and so far unreapeted - research vigil over the Wiltshire fields with Japanese TV, the BBC and the Army.
In the 1990s, he made a lucrative move to the US, but gradually other experts became more popular, and Mr Andrews' move to the US and work with Lawrence Rockefeller and Hollywood - he advised the makers of the movie Signs - alienated him from the roots in the crop circle community.
In 1998, his funding was cut and he announced the end of research carried out by his CPRI organisation.
