A village has been taken over by popular sci-fi figures replicated in scarecrow form, including E.T. and the Daleks from Doctor Who.

More than 50 installations are on display for the annual Wray Scarecrow Festival in Lancashire.

One of the organisers, John Gordon, said: "There are quite a few E.T.s around - on the bike, of course.

“We’ve got a number of Daleks, characters from Star Wars, and there’s an amazing one from Planet Of The Apes.”

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Mr Gordon added: “There was one person who had his family eating yoghurts for two weeks so they could get the all pots to stick on a Dalek.”

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The festival - which began in the early 1990s - has an origin story as quirky as the scarecrows on offer.

“It started off by accident,” Mr Gordon said.

"One of our people who lives here had gone to France on holiday and they saw what they thought was a man hanging off a tree and they were a bit worried about that, so they went into the local village to see what was happening and they noticed there was a scarecrow stuck on a bar outside the local pub.

"Wray is a very old traditional village and its had a May fair for centuries and they thought it would be a nice idea to add this to the May fair, so they persuaded one or two people to make scarecrows and it just took off from that.

“It was a momentary flash of brilliance.”

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The festival runs until 6 May, culminating with a traditional May fair including a giant scarecrow parade on 3 May.