Occidental Partridge

Perhaps some cause for full disclosure here. Why am I so interested in a kooky New Age groupuscule whose TGIF is paranormal Q&A sessions? Surely the only reasonable response to this Close Encounter with the Weird Kind is to bash out a brief, smart-alecky hatchet job, Vice-style, and forget it ever happened? (Or better yet just read n’ retweet Vice’s actual version of events. For all my griping, I can’t do what they do so well) The answer – and don’t forget it’s a very personal one - lies in Happy Science’s almost unique position in the uncomfortable overlap between faith and politics. I’m increasingly fascinated by those who calmly stare down the warnings from today’s legion secularists, and bestride, Colossus-like, the supposedly unbreachable chasm between church (or temple as the case may be) and state. As you’d expect, I have found very few outlets for this guilty pleasure, so for now I am prepared to accept the rough with the smooth when I encounter a new specimen, whether th...

I’ve just asked the young lady who hosted the event if there is someone I can interview. Her eyes have lit up – she knows just the chap for me, and politely disappears for a few minutes. She comes back beaming and takes me downstairs to the main room in the building, to introduce me to the head of Public Relations at Happy Science.  More people have heard the Iron Lady out in this nucleus of the temple – clearly where the hardcore crowd is at. But it’s time for them to go too now; a row of hipsters arises and ambles to the exit, nodding their thanks to an elder Japanese gentleman, who smiles benignly and is bedecked by a clerical stole draped over his shoulders. Around his neck there is the – I am realising – ubiquitous gold-tinted pendant bearing the initials ‘R.O.’ for Ryuho Okawa (or ‘O.R.’ to be more culturally accurate). The PR guy, as you might expect, is a more functionally attired gent – but also one with a prior engagement. I assure them that I have plenty of ti...

It sounded too wonderfully bonkers to resist. A Japanese séance contacting the spirit of the deceased Baroness Thatcher and quizzing her for guidance on Brexit? And on Friday 13th to boot? Yes please. As someone who stresses as much as anyone about the fate of our island nation as we attempt to leave the EU, and, spiritually speaking, as one who has lately oriented East as a means of bolstering his anaemic Christianity. Furthermore as a fan of Louis Theroux's earlier work, that explored deliciously countercultural worldviews as opposed to his more recent rather hand-wringing interest in junkies, convicts and otherwise blameless folk with an addiction to buying pets that might kill them, Happy Science's offer of a spiritual message from the late Iron Lady was an offer I couldn't refuse. In any case, dead or alive, she was bound to be more coherent than Emily Thornbury.                          ...

Show rating: ⭐⭐⭐ Values rating: ♖♜♖♜ This production proved an unexpected pleasure. Having rushed into the London Coliseum at a last minute invitation from a friend - finding time to remark how appropriately quixotic the mission seemed - and being unapprenticed in the ways of the Knight of Woeful Countenance, I was emotionally numbed by its beginning. It appeared to be yet another modern retelling of a classic, as Kelsey Grammer's statuesque Miguel de Cervantes is brought low amongst a large cast of trenchcoat-wearing thugs and dustbin fires, to await trial before the 'Inquisition'. The apparent wealth of the writer alerts the attention of his more run-of-the-mill cellmates and they immediately set upon his handsome costume and props collection. Out of bored cruelty and mistrust, they are set to cast his precious unfinished manuscript 'The Ingenious Nobleman Don Quixote of La Mancha' into the flaming trashcan before Cervantes convinces them of a right to trial fo...

“I dislike rallies and it might get ugly if we haven’t left.”, said a friend when I asked if he’d be joining me on the Leave Means Leave rally on the 29 th  March. I assured him the average age of the crowd would be about 50 and if in the unlikely event of ugliness we could simply scarper. My friend is no shrinking violet and far from a hand-wringing liberal; he voted Leave and has ribbed me as a ‘pussy’ ever since for failing to do the same. But my sanguinity was not from any particular natural bullishness either. I’d simply been on enough rallies in my misspent late teens to know that a big enough crowd equals a diverse crowd. If there is one thing that brings large diverse groups of people together – other than the cause or attraction for which they’ve congregated in the first place – it is their aversion to violence in general and being hit in the face in particular. Furthermore I had seen the awe-inspiring pictures and videos from the March to Leave, of people with enough a...