Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

pocket. He is there to trick you into supporting his preconceived story. The story he will write has
already been outlined by a sub-editor from old clippings and AMA releases . . .'
Hubbard's sensitivity towards newspapers was understandable, since Scientology was an easy
target and wherever it flourished it was attacked by a universally unsympathetic press. In Australia,
the church had suffered a great deal of unfavourable publicity, in particular from a Melbourne
newspaper, Truth, which published a series of hostile features about Scientologists being
'brainwashed' and alienated from their families. The media attacks led to questions in the
Parliament of Victoria, allegations of blackmail and extortion, and accusations that Scientology was
affecting the 'mental well-being' of undergraduates at Melbourne University. In November 1963, the
Victoria government appointed a Board of Inquiry into Scientology.
At Saint Hill Manor, Hubbard at first professed himself to be pleased about the Australian inquiry
and even hinted that it bad been set up at his instigation. But it soon became evident that the inquiry
was basically antagonistic to Scientology and when an invitation arrived from Melbourne for him to
appear, he contrived to find compelling reasons to refuse.
In March 1964, the Saturday Evening Post published what would be one of the last full-scale media
interviews with L. Ron Hubbard, even though he would be pursued by reporters for the rest of his
life. It was an unusually objective feature, although little new was revealed except for Hubbard's
claim that he had recently been approached by Fidel Castro to train a corps of Cuban
Scientologists. The founder of the Church of Scientology appeared willing to discuss any subject
except money. He was, he said, independently wealthy and drew only a token salary of $70 a week,
Scientology being a 'labour of love'.
Certainly the Saturday Evening Post reporter was deeply impressed by Hubbard's lifestyle - the
Georgian mansion, the butler who served his afternoon Coca-Cola on a silver tray, the chauffeur
polishing the new Pontiac and the Jaguar in the garage, and the broad acres of the estate.[3] But
while it might have seemed to a visiting journalist that Hubbard had acquired many of the traditional
tastes of an English country gentleman, the reality was very different, as Ken Urquhart, a dedicated
young Scientologist who worked as the butler at Saint Hill, explained: 'Neither Ron nor Mary Sue
lived the way one might have expected in a house like that. They spent most of their time working;
there was very little socializing. They would go to bed very late, usually in the small hours of the
morning, and get up in the early afternoon.
'Ron used to audit himself with an E-meter as soon as he got out of bed. When he called down to
the kitchen I would take him up a cup of hot chocolate and stay with him while he drank it. He used
to sit at a table at the end of his four-poster bed chatting about the news or the weather or the latest
goings-on at Saint Hill. I remember he used to talk a lot about his childhood. He seemed to want to
give the impression that he was rather upper-class; he liked to use French expressions, for
example, although his accent was dreadful. He said his mother was a very fine woman. He told me
that when she was in hospital desperately ill he got there just in time to tell her that all she had to
do was leave her body and go down to the maternity ward and pick up another one. He didn't say
what her reaction was.
'When he went to have a bath I'd extricate myself and rush downstairs to cook breakfast for him and
Mary Sue. She had a separate bedroom, but usually had breakfast with him - scrambled eggs,
sausages, mushrooms and tomatoes. After breakfast he would go into his office and I would rarely
see him again until six-thirty when I had to have the table laid for dinner. At six-twenty-five I would go
into his office with a jacket for him to wear to table and after dinner they would spend an hour or so
watching television with the children and then he and Mary Sue would return to work in their