L Ron Hubbard
Went to the cupboard, but the cupboard was bare. Except for some golden tablets. Which he popped and came up with…

Dianetics
Slimming system that works particularly well on people’s wallets.

Scientology
Word that combines the Latin “scientia”, meaning “skill”, and the Greek “ology”, meaning “getting tragically gullible people to hand over their cash”.

Beliefs
75 million years ago billions of aliens came to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners with no engines, stacked them around volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs. The souls of the aliens then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to do this today, making us all feel a bit poorly. Scientologists believe they can make lots of rich people believe this.

Thetan
What church elders get while using your money for theholiday on thebeach.

Questionnaire
In the hands of people who stop you in the street. Contains questions like, “If I smile at you like a demented Mormon, will you give me all your money?”.

Electropsychometer
Electric device designed to measure the number of bonkers people in Scientology. Has a particularly large screen.

Past lives
We are all aliens trapped in human bodies. It’s just that some human bodies are smaller than others (eg Tom Cruise), some are uglier than others (eg John Travolta), and some have brains that wouldn’t see the scam even if it involved a fair, a man in a fez, a fiver, and three upturned cups (eg Katie Holmes, Beck, Juliette Lewis, Jason Lee).

Cult
Tom Cruise.

Xenu
Warrior princess. Marginally more believable than Tom Cruise.

Auditing sessions
What your accountant never has to do again as the Church of Scientology has taken all your money.

Prison rehabilitation
Scientology is famous for trying to rehabilitate criminals and drug addicts. It is still trying with L Ron Hubbard.

The Way to Happiness
Scientology pamphlet describing its morality. This is not a large document.

Reincarnation
What the elders would need to spend all the money they have stolen collected.

Battlefield Earth
The French courts, where Scientology is trying to prove it is not a fraud.

Religion
But of course it is. It’s a religion. It is based on ludicrous events that can neither be proved nor disproved, is exceedingly well funded by blindly faithful devotees and does not take kindly to criticism.

Conclusion
We hear from their lawyers.