03 Sep 2000

Shellac <shellac@shellac.freeserve.co.uk>

Yesterday (Saturday) Richard Ford and I staged another mini-picket outside the Tottenham Court Road org in London (the third in four weeks, I think).

I turned up a little early, and began handing out leaflets to the public on my own. It took the the Scientologists a while to realise that I wasn't advertising a computer or furniture shop (which is fairly common on TCR). One guy (short, Elvis-sideburns, from southern Europe) eventually asked me who I worked for. This conversational gambit invariably betrays Scientologists. Not 'what are you handing out?' or anything obvious like that. He was affable, though, and asked what I knew about Scientology.

Before I could answer Richard turned up. He brought an alien puppet, and (more importantly) a loud voice to advertise our presence. Eventually three scientologists came out. Two handed out copies of 'Freedom' (it's free, it's dumb), while another tried body routing.

The public reaction was pretty good. Richard's puppet seemed to hypnotise them. Most intriguing was a woman (with her husband) who told me that she had discovered her boss was a scientologist, and was actively recruiting. We pointed her to xenu.net, and wished her luck. Not a pleasant position to be in.

In addition we had the usual well wishers ('Well done', 'Bunch of fscking loons' etc), people who assumed we were fundagelical christians (I _am_ insulted, but hide the pain well) and the simply curious (best of these - "Where are they based?" "Er - the shop in front of us" "What? [looks round] Oh my god!").

Most interesting feature of TCR remains the dog who does not bark, or rather the OSA agent who never appears: Jaques Vollet. Jaques has been MIA for several months. Even odder was the scientologist who denied having heard of Jaques. A little worrying.

Incidently, Free-Dumb lists a new address for the 'Celebrity' Centre. It is listed at: 10 Leinster Gardens, W2. Which is in Bayswater. Whether this will finally gain them any UK celebs remains an open question (but 'no' seems like a good guess).

We will return,

Shellac